NEWZOO TREND REPORT© Newzoo 20182Foreword1. Definitions & Scope2. Actors and Value Chain3. Impact to Consumers5. What’s Next?0506122027© Newzoo 20184© Newzoo 2018ForewordCANDICE MUDRICKSr. Market AnalystLapsed gamers represent approximately 4% of a population comprising 1Bn active online (urban) users.5Just as mobile gaming has expanded the market by makinggames accessible to billions of people across the globe viasmartphones and tablets, cloud gaming has the potential toexpand the market for premium games beyond the currentconsole and PC audience by making them accessible toanyone on any device.The concept of cloud gaming (as cloud computing) hasbeen around for decades, but the first implementation of adedicated cloud-gaming service was launched by G-clusterin 2004 for the Japanese market. The United States saw itsfirst service in 2010 when OnLive launched. However, itsuptake was held back by a number of factors, primarilyinternet speed and latency. Faced with instability andmixed reviews, OnLive sold most of its technology to Sony(which then shut it down) after just two years on themarket. Sony also purchased similar service Gaikai in 2012and used the technology for its own streaming products.The year is now 2018 and internet speeds have improvedsince OnLive. According to Akamai, we have gone from anaverage of 4.7 Mbps internet connection speed in theUnited States in 2010 to 18.7 Mbps in 2017. We have gonefrom iPhone 4 to iPhone XS and from the first-generationiPad to the sixth. We are within reach of 5G, which willenable high-bandwidth, low-latency mobile connections,though there are still multiple hurdles to clear before it canreach its true potential.As the tech continues to improve and cloud gaming grows,we expect an increase in the overall demand for games asnew consumer groups enter the ecosystem. We also expectto see challenges and innovations in business models, gamedevelopment, content discovery, engagement options, andeven shakeups to gameplay itself. In this report, we take alook at the state of the industry and explore the potentialimpacts across the ecosystem.1. DEFINITIONS AND SCOPE© Newzoo 20187© Newzoo 2018But equally appealing Some have confused the concept of cloud gaming with purely subscription-based, gaming-download services like the Xbox Game Pass. Those services give usersaccess to a range of titles, which are then downloaded to the users’ hard drives. Everything is processed by the local hardware, not in the cloud. Cloud gaming, onthe other hand, is primarily about streaming game content to consumers. The most prominent services are a combination of a cloud-computing and a game-streaming subscription, presenting a consumer-friendly way to instantly play the most demanding titles. Cloud computing effectively removes the need to ownhardware, while a games subscription removes the need to own software.However, unlike cloud computing, the technical requirements for latency are much stricter; a delay in collision detection can mean the difference between in-gamelife and death, and high-speed competitive gamers require split-second reaction times. And, unlike Netflix, there is no possibility to buffer the content; a game isinteractive and requires real-time input control processing. However, there are plenty of use cases outside of top-tier, competitive multiplayer games that cloudgaming is perfect for – and plenty of consumers ready to try them.8© Newzoo 2018Trade-offs between command streaming and video streaming*9Game logic and graphics commands are processed in thecloud, while graphics rendering happens locally on thedevice GPU. In contrast to video streaming, this approachlowers the bandwidth usage (sending commands requiresless bandwidth than video) and latency (no encoding/decoding of the video stream), but the quality of graphicsis limited to local GPU capabilities.All rendering and game logic is processed in the cloud onremote CPUs/GPUs. The video is streamed to the user anddecoded locally, much like a streamed Netflix video. Thisapproach requires more bandwidth and processing timebut can utilize higher-powered GPUs than the local device.*Other architecture options also exist (e.g., combinations of the two models), but detailed explanations are beyond the scope of this report.© Newzoo 2018Consumers will experience different adoption rates depending on region, need, and network capabilitiesIn remote processing, a seamless experience requires the access device to be within range of a stable,fast access point and within acceptable range of the cloud cluster. Thus, in the short term, the mostpremium game experiences will still be restricted to living rooms in countries with a high averageinternet speed (and close to cloud servers). For example, Shadow EU servers are located in Amsterdamand Paris and currently serve the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, andSwitzerland. However, gamers who live in rural communities may prefer local hardware to remoteprocessing, as ...
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