Reply to post: Consumers want cloud gaming, heard of Fortnite?

Consumers want cloud gaming, heard of Fortnite?

So, first off, I suspect that Akamai doesn't have a network architecture that supports cloud gaming. Since delivering the full cloud gaming experience is nothing like delivering streaming video files. From a CDN perspective, with cloud gaming, caches are useless and the network cannot rely on the video distributor to have an already encoded asset ready for delivery to the target device. There is going to be a tighter integration of the rendering (encoding) with the delivery infrastructure, which means edge compute, and just a very different architecture than any CDN has today. So with that said it's no surprise that Tom would dismiss the "opportunity." He's actually correct, provided he is speaking only from the Akamai perspective.

Now, as for the commercial opportunity of cloud gaming... Consider that several quarters ago, in their earnings call, Reed Hastings stated that Netflix main threat was Fortnite. And I believe he's right. Yes, Fortnite isn't a true cloud gaming experience, but what has driven its massive popularity among serious and casual gamers alike, is the cross device ability to play anywhere you want. Standing inline at the store, and you can whip out your phone to play. Riding in the car, you can play. Need a break at work, you can play. Connected to your fav console on the big TV... etc... This is where, cloud gaming is going to open up massive opportunities to extend the entertainment of game play to a broad cross section of players who till now haven't even known perhaps that they would enjoy the experience. So, say what you want about previous attempts at cloud gaming, but what's different now is that we have ubiquitous power on the device side, with compute and cloud infrastructure and bandwidth (soon to be accelerated with 5G) that can enable technically an experience that is going to be stunningly close to dedicated hardware. Furthermore, compute and connectivity speeds and density are only going to grow/get faster...