Gaming companies in India are moving plans for new features and services before the deployment of 5G service in the country. The sector, which includes game manufacturers for mobile phones and PCs, streaming companies and even venture capital companies (VC), considers 5G as a possible inflection point that could stimulate new sources of income.
For example, the French cloud game firm Blacknut is in talks with Reliance Jio and Airtel to synchronize the launch of the Cloud game services with that of 5G Networks in India, according to Olivier Avaro, founder and chief executive. In September 2021, Black Nut teamed up with Airtel to lead the first cloud game demonstration in India in a 5G environment. Jio did not comment on talks with Black Nut.
Cloud game is a form of platform agnostic game where players are not necessary to install games or buy high-end devices. The games are broadcast directly from servers, which manage heavy treatment tasks, allowing games with high intensity of resources to be played on relatively lower and cheaper devices. “Telecommunications tried to create content but did not succeed. They believe that we can help by providing a catalog of game content with infrastructure, “said Avaro.
Airtel did not comment on the plans to launch Cloud games on 5G with Black Nut. The telecommunications operator, however, said that he also considers 5G to provide new income options. “The game will be at the center of our commercial strategy when we are impatient to increase our average user income (ARPU),” said Adarsh Nair, CEO of Airtel Digital. He said that the cloud games will be among the largest use cases of 5G thanks to the “high speed and low latency combination”.
The lower latency allows data to travel more quickly from source to the user. This allows higher video resolutions to move smoothly on 5G phones and to use features such as chat without offset and ventilation. Avaro said that Indian telecommunications operators did not currently want to incur capital expenses necessary for cloud games. He said that he demanded that dedicated graphic processing units (GPU) be deployed on a large scale on the cloud level, and said that the company aims to bring this infra to the operating expenses for Telecommunications.