Cloud Gaming Market Research Report - Global Forecast till 2030

Impact of Covid-19 on the Cloud Gaming Market

The pandemic, which originated in China, has now infected many countries across the globe. Due to which over the past few months, many lives and businesses have been affected at an unprecedented rate. Governments have advised or ordered citizens to stay at home to stop the spread of the virus. While many of the markets have been impacted due to this pandemic, cloud computing is witnessing strong demand. With an increasing number of people turning to internet-based entertainment services at home, the cloud computing market has emerged stronger than ever during this pandemic. The Cloud gaming market has experienced a boom as a result of the crisis. Cloud gaming or on-demand gaming has emerged as one of the most important sources of entertainment during this quarantine. Cloud gaming allows the storing of the users’ files in the cloud server so that the games can be played independently from any platform like a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or a desktop computer at any time.

With free time in hand, people are playing on-demand games on their smartphones or consoles due to which cloud gaming is witnessing a considerable demand among serious gamers, casual gamers, as well as social gamers. Amidst the COVID-19 lockdown, the global cloud gaming market is witnessing a rapid increase in user engagement. India is one of the countries witnessing a significant demand for cloud or on-demand gaming during this pandemic. Games such as Houseparty and Psych have emerged as some of the most-played games during the quarantine period. The boost in user engagement has reached a level where the users are experiencing lags in the gaming interface of Psych. Also, the majority of the US population has turned toward video games to pass the time during the lockdown. Verizon Communications has witnessed a surprising boost of 75% in usage during March 2020. However, this sudden spike in time spent on gaming has impacted such platforms. On March 15, various cloud gaming service providers faced issues due to a sudden surge in the number of users. WinZo Games witnessed a 3X increase in gameplays and 30% higher traffic. WinZo Games then worked closely with AWS in the next few days to scale the servers to deal with such high demand. Also, on the same day, several Microsoft Xbox Live users were unable to log-in to their Xbox consoles. The issue was resolved within a few hours. The demand is so high that the service providers have had to limit the bandwidth of the streaming services to ensure a smooth gaming experience for gamers across the globe. In an official Azure blog, Microsoft assured its gaming users that it is actively monitoring the performance of Xbox Live and usage trends to ensure that the services for gamers worldwide are optimized. Both PC/console and mobile gaming platforms are facing an unprecedented demand during the COVID-19 phase, thereby increasing the market growth rate.