By Ankur Singh
With revolutionary and advanced technologies now available in smartphones, the online gaming industry is among the fastest booming sectors in India. The Indian online gaming market owes a great deal of its tremendous growth to the increasing penetration of smartphones and affordable data plans.
What used to be a hobby that required an expensive console and a regular supply of expensive games has now been opened up to anybody with a mobile phone.
In a country like India which is home to nearly 500 million mobile users and second in terms of smartphone users in the world after China, the online gaming landscape is about to witness a sea change result with 5G or the fifth-generation mobile wireless technology.
Here are the many reasons why the Indian gaming landscape is looking forward to the arrival of 5G network.
No latency and lag
One of the things an avid gamer dreads the most while gaming is response delay or latency. With response times as low as five milliseconds the in-game action will be smoother than ever, with no lag between your input and the game’s response.
Multiplayer mobile gaming
5G’s greater reliability is expected to be unparalleled even with high numbers of concurrent players. Think of e-sports, 5G will also have a tremendous impact on games under this category where milliseconds can make a difference between living or dying, winning or not winning the first-place purse, which continues to grow.
Cloud gaming
5G’s rollout will shift the storage, power consumption, and processing power away from the personal computers and into the edge cloud. Future of online games require extra bandwidth, ultra-low latency and superfast throughput speeds, which makes 5G ideal for delivering cloud-based games. 5G would also enable VR users to avail the new gaming experience with only a headset, meaning consumption would be possible anytime, anywhere. This will also bridge the gap between the mobile gaming and mainstream gaming markets allowing more people to join in on both competitive gaming and community-sourced gaming from more places.
Growth in user base in tier 2 and tier 3 cities
Multiple research reports have unveiled that the increased availability of affordable smartphones coupled with high-speed internet has prompted many people to take up gaming across small cities and towns in India. Interestingly, despite the lack of a major city being a gaming hub, the growing popularity of mobile gaming in these locations is promising. As 5G enabled-mobile devices will provide graphics-rich, high-frames-per-second gaming experience almost anywhere, it will further fan the flames of mobile gaming’s popularity across India.
Unlocking AR and VR
5G mobile network will bring along new dawn of mobile augmented and virtual reality experiences. With the current generation networks, it is not possible to make both AR and VR a possibility as both use cases require stringent network requirements such as low latency, high reliability and high bandwidth. The sensors and display screen in the VR helmet need those features to react in real time to the slightest movements of the gamer’s head, or even one’s entire body.
With its speed and low latency, most of the processing power can live in the cloud—allowing VR headsets to be set free from cords and producing real tactical experiences where gamers can receive haptic feedback. The upcoming network will also give the game developers a larger canvas to design new immersive experiences like take for example adding new sensations such as car vibrations for racing games.
Streaming
Not just restricted to online gamers but 5G’s impact on a gaming enthusiast’s streaming experience of online games could also be truly revolutionary. The new generation of network will allow gaming enthusiasts to seamlessly stream competitions, tournaments, and games in real-time on different platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, and more in the highest quality possible.
A holistic 5G experience can truly outdo the current mobile and connectivity experience for online gamers. Its impact on the gaming market is beyond just faster speeds and offering a general step up in performance. The next generation mobile network will go miles in the elimination of technology hurdles, cost reductions across varying geographies and making video game community a more inclusive place.
The author is founder and CEO of Witzeal Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Views expressed are personal.
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