Learn how edge gaming can boost gaming experience—and deliver long-term benefits to stay ahead of the curve.

The gaming market is booming at a rate we have never witnessed before. Consider this: The gaming market will grow at a CAGR of 9.3% between 2020-2027. Globally, today, there are over 1.48 billion players and 55% of those are in the Asia Pacific region.

That puts pressure on gaming providers to stay ahead of the industry. Gaming is a real-time experience. When thousands of players engage in a digitally-intensive, heavy-graphics game at the same time, latency plays spoilt sport.

Data processing workloads are, normally, shared between the user’s console and the cloud. That means, image processing rates have a huge impact on overall user experience.

Today, gaming images have moved from standard definition to HD and now to 4K. As the adoption of VR and AR increases, frame sizes will reach 8K levels.

Cloud gaming alone cannot shoulder this load. The gaming industry needs to configure its networks with edge computing to locate servers as close to gamers as possible.

Edge computing is revolutionising the gaming industry. It’s bringing about a paradigm shift in how gaming is consumed. Here are a few instances of how edge gaming is taking gaming to the next level.

Enhanced Multiplayer Experience

As gaming becomes more accessible and digital, gamers want a more collaborative, real-time, and multiplayer strategy games on any device. Multiplayer games demand increased device processing and drain device batteries.

Also, multiplayer gaming is latency-sensitive and bandwidth-intensive. By matching a gamer to their location and installing edge servers closer to them, latency can be reduced significantly. This, in turn, will decrease lag.

The downside of centralised public clouds is that they are placed far away from the user. That results in high network latency, packet loss and jitter. This increases round trip data delivery times, thereby adversely impacting performance, and gamer churn.

Edge gaming enables gaming companies to process data locally and reduce the distance data needs to travel. This reduces public internet congestion problems, delivering better user experience, greater loyalty, and, as a result, higher profitability.

Augmenting Leader-boards and Player Matchmaking

Matching thousands of players at the same geographic location—and skill level—is a core ingredient of games that attract players.

Edge gaming enables player lists to be stored in servers that are placed close to the client. Players can be grouped more quickly, thereby allowing them to enter games faster, and getting games with low player counts off the ground.

At the same time, gaming companies can optimise the most popular features and face-offs by storing player data and lists of most commonly matched players where they can be accessed quickly.

While players can play a game with anyone across the world, it’s easier to start a quick game with a player who shares the same time zone. Based on data stored on edge servers, a local matchmaking server could throw suggestions for a player to start a game with a known player within their region.

Enabling Powerful Computing Capability

The primary objective of mobile edge computing is to provide storage and computational resources close to a user at the network edge.

Today, most gaming solutions demand enormous amounts of compute, processing and data storage capabilities. But mobile devices aren’t able to keep up with the needs of gamers. The cloud can only do so much.

Gaming requires faster connectivity from telecom providers and internet exchanges. With low-latency networking, the access, availability, and experience of gaming from the end device will improve significantly.

With edge gaming, the network edge is infused with remarkable computing, intelligence, hardware speed and storage capabilities. As more complex and data-intensive games hit the market, the significance of edge gaming will become even more pronounced.

Protecting Game Servers Against DDoS Attacks

Games have always suffered at the hands of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. These attacks occur when hackers block a target server or network with traffic and deny access to users. DDoS attacks result in lag, disconnection, and ping spikes, that are disruptive to gamers.

When a gaming system is attacked by DDoS, the entire gaming session becomes extremely slow and unplayable. This gives the attacker immense advantage. A case in point is the recent DDoS attack by Apex Legends players. When they were killed in a game, they would use DDoS attacks to overload the game’s servers and gain an advantage.

A new generation of hyperscale DDoS attacks, spurred on by 5G, are going to give gaming companies sleepless nights. Edge gaming offer DDoS protection. Edge gaming filters data and runs it through a scrubbing process. This ensures only clean data enters a gaming facility, thereby preventing DDoS attacks.

Expanding User Base

As user growth begins to shrink in developed markets, Southeast Asia is emerging as a fertile opportunity for gaming companies looking to expand their foothold.

Edge computing helps companies gain ground in emerging markets throughout Southeast Asia, India, and LATAM—places where gamers are increasingly taking to online gaming. Today, according to a survey by Google , over 82% of Southeast Asia's urban online population are gamers. That’s a huge market by itself.

By leveraging edge computing, gaming providers can bring services to new markets with lower operational cost and scalability. It is crucial for gaming companies to work with an edge gaming provider who has extensive POPs, API integration with ISPs, and compatibility with all devices.

TM Edge Gaming offers exactly that and more. It is a holistic edge gaming ecosystem that leverages TM’s edge facility located closer to the end user to provide a high quality, reliable, stable, and immersive digital gaming experience. TM can double up as a telco provider and an edge gaming provider that delivers an end-to-end solution that ensures gaming services are always on. Another advantage of partnering with TM is that it is a major telco player in Southeast Asia, and can help gaming providers explore this new and emerging gaming market.

Take gaming to the next level with TM Edge Gaming.