Gaming can be an expensive hobby.
First, gamers must invest in a console, which could be as much as $400. Then they start building a game library, with costs of up to $70 per title. Next, there are the peripherals such as headsets, extra controllers and a charging station. Before they know it, it’s time to get the next-gen console and purchase new releases of game titles.
With the GameFly Streaming gaming-as-a-service subscription offering, gamers can play console-quality games on the connected devices they already own.
Gamers get access to more than 100 console-quality games that users are familiar with from their previous console experience. . The titles range from family-friendly to epic action games and are refreshed regularly. Players can save their games to the cloud and resume playing on any device they want.
Evolution of media and entertainment
In the media and entertainment market, gaming is the last segment to begin streaming.
Twenty years ago, people consumed audio as physical CDs. When the internet became more mature and the bandwidth became better, people started to download music. It wasn’t long before people started to stream audio. The same thing happened with video. People watched movies on DVD, then they downloaded them, and now they can stream them using streaming services such as Netflix and YouTube.
Gaming is the most complex segment of the media and entertainment industry. People still consume games through physical discs made for specialized gaming consoles. Though more and more players are downloading games, the files typically still need to run on high-end PCs or game consoles.
GameFly has brought that third element to the market: streaming games without the need to have a game console or physical DVDs. Gamers can stream and consume the games like video services on Netflix or a VOD channel with a local Telco provider.
How the magic happens
GameFly Streaming is available in app stores on smart TV brands, such as Samsung, LG and Philips, streaming media players, and telco companies’ set top boxes. Gamers connect any game controller to the TV screen and play high-end console games directly on their TVs.
It sounds so simple, but a lot goes on behind the scenes to make on-demand games work.
For the gaming as a service magic to happen, GameFly had to master latency.
When the user presses a command on the game controller, the command goes from the game controller to the TV screen, and from the TV screen over the internet to a server located maybe 1,000 miles away.
GameFly must encode the output of the server to enter the standard end tag stream, send it back to the server over the open internet, decode the video on the TV or device, and display it.
All this has to happen in less than 80 milliseconds.
GameFly Streaming needed a hosting solution that could support its global service as well as offer graphics processing unit (GPU) technology, which is required for successful game streaming. One reason GameFly chose IBM Cloud was because of its worldwide data center presence. The closer the servers are to users, the better the gaming-as-a-service delivery is.
GameFly uses 12 IBM data center locations and is getting an average latency of 25 milliseconds in the US and 32 milliseconds in Europe. That’s a key benefit of using IBM Cloud.
Also appealing about IBM Cloud is that GameFly can build servers in the data centers with the GPUs that it needs and add new servers in four hours or less. It can do that flexibly, on a month-to-month basis if necessary. It helps to control capacity and make better use of the servers.
Taking a test drive
Gamers who would like to try the service and lacking a game controller, can download a mobile app and pair it with their TV. It’s a good way for players to sample gaming as a service or a platform or game other than what they have at home.
Learn more about GameFly Streaming.
Find out more about IBM Cloud gaming solutions.
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