Some of the most popular video games require online connectivity. For many Americans, the idea of linking arcade cabinets might seem outlandish—after all, arcades are a sundowning industry here. But in Japan, arcades are huge business. These video game produce an incredible amount of data which is processed and delivered by data centers. Games like Fortnite and World of Warcraft can produce about 100 GB of data every second. Data centers are becoming an increasing part of the gaming world.
The next progression is coming from a well-known gaming company, SEGA, and their plans to use arcade gaming hardware to form a cloud. The idea of Fog gaming feels familiar because it’s quite similar to cloud gaming. It also incorporates the idea of Edge computing, by bringing the power closer to its users. One of the main differences between cloud gaming and fog gaming is the location of the servers. The concept of SEGA’s fog gaming system is to use local arcades and game centers as a server farm for low latency game streaming. Instead of streaming from the cloud, gamers are harnessing the power of the CPUs and GPUs of local arcade machines. Because these gaming servers will provide services locally users will not have to worry about slow connection. Arcade owners can also make some extra money by allowing SEGA to use its arcades.
Obviously a thriving business in normal circumstances, are really struggling during the policies and self quarantines that have helped to stanch the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus). Using spare bandwidth to help people play games from home could both improve Sega’s finances and save the upfront cost of building the kind of streaming infrastructure other services may use.
The gaming industry has also grown tremendously over the years. These games require an immense amount of data to be transferred from large data centers to its users. Fog gaming takes all of these aspects of connectivity and makes the connectivity between games and its users more seamless. Fog gaming is the natural progression of all gaming and uses these connections to make gameplay better for its users. Gamers should be excited about what and where this combination of technology could go.
