The Role of CDNs in Bringing Cloud Gaming to The Next Level

As one of the biggest tech disruptors in the past decade, cloud computing — and all the breakthroughs that came with it — has been responsible for numerous changes in the way people live their everyday lives, from listening to music on Spotify, streaming movies and TV shows on Netflix, to graphic designing using Canva. It seems that modern gamers are also ready to switch from consoles, PCs, and smartphones to cloud gaming.

Cloud gaming is a method of gaming using remote servers which reside in remote data centers. With this method, games are kept, rendered, and played entirely in these servers, but players receive gaming information and interact with everything locally on an app or browser installed on their devices; basically, players stream games. In a nutshell, cloud gaming is quite similar to streaming YouTube or Netflix videos but with a different pricing system and bigger technical challenges.

The Challenges of Cloud Gaming
The biggest challenge of cloud gaming is latency. When gamers are playing games on a console or PC, latency issues are usually unnoticeable because all the data processing as well as graphics and video rendering is all done locally. However, unlike the more popular gaming method, cloud gaming services run on a centralized cloud. This creates lag for gamers as they are geographically dispersed and often located far away from the servers hosting the titles they want to play. All game enthusiasts will agree that lag is unacceptable in gaming. Take competitive multiplayer games and esports as an example. The players of this game segment may be the most sensitive to latency during gameplay, especially if they’re competing professionally. The further a player is from a game origin server, the higher the latency; this means those who are closer to the server may get an unfair advantage in the competition. 

In addition, some games actually offer their players a high-level gaming experience through high-level computation, such as high definition graphics, AR, and in-game social features. Immersive games, for example, especially the top AAA franchise titles, feature as much realism as possible — physics, environments, weather, particle systems, dynamic lighting, and other details — which demand high frame rate and resolution. With cloud gaming, all the details and complexity must be executed in the cloud and then streamed to the players’ interface, often a large-screen TV or monitor rendering in high definition. With so much computation, although the cloud may not be the issue, the network may. A larger stream consumes more bandwidth, leading to greater demands on the players’ connectivity. To manage throughput, cloud streaming services must dynamically adjust to deliver the fewest number of bits needed for the best experience on a given device.

The Role of CDNs in Managing The Challenges
One tech breakthrough that is essential to deliver superior gaming experience, hence fuelling the cloud gaming trend, is a CDN. A CDN utilizes a network of multiple strategically distributed edge servers, or called Points of Presences (PoPs) that cache and serve content from the location closest to a player. These PoPs, which eliminate the distance between a game’s origin server and the players, allow CDN to offer more reliable and efficient content delivery.

In terms of cloud gaming, CDNs ensure game enthusiasts across the globe can stream games with lower latency, faster ping times, and consistent speed, regardless of where they are located. Typically supported by embedded intelligence, CDNs deliver a consistent and optimal — lag-free, high-quality, robust, and secure — gaming experience at all times which is crucial for segments like immersive games and competitive multiplayer games. Moreover, CDNs also provide flexibility and scalability to handle traffic spikes.

In the cloud gaming industry, the winners are the service providers who can deliver the ease of accessibility along with a high quality of user experience. Thus, it is crucial for them to invest in supporting technologies that will drive the growth of this particular advanced service such as CDNs.