Why the Cloud is Great for Gaming
One of the latest trends in the gaming industry is the shift towards the cloud. While there is a lot of hype surrounding the term ‘Cloud’, practically every industry has significantly benefited from joining the cloud revolution, and the gaming industry is no exception. In fact, gaming might be the industry that has benefited the most.
As everyone knows, video games require high-speed processors, high-end graphics, and lots of memory. By moving into the cloud, the gaming industry makes maximum use of resources to offer the highest gaming experience for its users. While scaling is an important feature that attracts the gaming industry towards the cloud, there are other features that can boost the performance of high-end MMORPGs. Before talking about other features, let us look at scalability.
Automatic Scaling
One of the most striking features of cloud computing technology is automatic scaling. The ability to scale up your resources during peak traffic times and the flexibility to scale down during off-peak times is cost effective for companies in terms of capital expenditures as well as operating expenses.
Moreover, the performance of the server is improved. Consider an instance where several people log onto a MMORPG game. If the server capacity is 6000 users, it starts going down if more people start logging in. If the game is hosted on a cloud server, where the capacity of the data center is 64 servers, each server can host 6000 users. That’s a total of 384,000 users who can enjoy the highest performance of the server at the same time. Under normal circumstances, not more than 6000 people log in to the server.
The billing is done only for the services used. This is the power of automatic scaling.
What does the cloud offer game developers?
While scalability is one of the main advantages of cloud gaming, there are other benefits for game developers. In the traditional development environment, game developers are stuck with static consoles. Though gamers have the necessary creativity to devise high-end games, they have to limit their creativity to suit the existing infrastructure. In a cloud-based environment, hardware is constantly updated. Developers get the opportunity to use cutting-edge technologies to deliver amazing games.
Cloud technology also answers latency concerns. Cloud-based games run at 60 frames per second and 1080 resolution. This is a game developers’ dream when compared to the 30 fps and 780 resolution of static consoles. Lower latency levels greatly increase the performance of the game.
Another benefit of cloud-based gaming is device independence. Developers get the flexibility to create device-independent games. Whether games are to be used on PCs, notebooks, televisions, tablets or smartphones, developers can create games that are of high quality, low latency, and are device independent. With mobile devices, end users can access the game from anywhere. They can pause and continue the game at any time.
Another positive feature is that game users do not have to purchase new hardware, install applications, download programs, or carry physical discs. The hassle-free game environment offered by the cloud environment gives license to developers to unleash their creative talents in creating innovative games.
How is a game server configured? Read more on the Game Server Solution page of GMO Cloud and see how all these benefits come together to handle sudden heavy traffic.
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About the Guest Author:
Kaushik Das is an engineer, research analyst and a technical writer in the areas wireless, IT, enterprise software, next-generation hosting, storage and renewable energy. He specializes in competitive analysis, market research, industry insights, white paper and actionable web content development.
