An article by Claudia Nemat, Member of the Deutsche Telekom AG Board of Management, Technology and Innovation.
Right now, your own computer, console, or smartphone determines whether and how smoothly video games run. Soon, a data center will take care of this task. And make sure you always have the best performance. That's the idea behind cloud gaming: it will save you from having to buy your own hardware in the future. And you can use your old gaming laptop or smartphone longer, for example. We recently announced MagentaGaming, a new product for gamers. We will be showing it for the first time at gamescom in Cologne. Selected Deutsche Telekom customers can sign up there – and at www.telekom.de/magenta-gaming – for the free beta phase. We will then roll out MagentaGaming for everyone next year.
Right now, your own computer, console, or smartphone determines whether and how smoothly video games run. Soon, a data center will take care of this task. And make sure you always have the best performance. That's the idea behind cloud gaming: it will save you from having to buy your own hardware in the future. And you can use your old gaming laptop or smartphone longer, for example. We recently announced MagentaGaming, a new product for gamers. We will be showing it for the first time at gamescom in Cologne. Selected Deutsche Telekom customers can sign up there – and at www.telekom.de/magenta-gaming – for the free beta phase. We will then roll out MagentaGaming for everyone next year.
MagentaGaming is a cloud gaming service. That means the computing capacity no longer comes from your own computer or console, but instead from the cloud. The video games are streamed – the same way that we stream movies, TV shows, and music today. As a result, even the most technically demanding games will run on older PCs – and even on smartphones, tablets, and smart TVs. Users can then access a wide selection of games seamlessly, through an app. Think of it as the Netflix of video games. In the future, we plan to integrate MagentaGaming with MagentaTV.
Many players
We're sure that the future of gaming lies in the cloud. The market will change, and we're not the only ones who think so. Other large tech corporations are also betting on this transformation – including Google, for example. Even Sony and Microsoft, the console giants, are working on their own services. The advantages are apparent: gamers will no longer be reliant on the latest expensive hardware. They will be able to play their games on nearly any platform. Long installation times and annoying update downloads will also be eliminated.
Score with the best network
Of course, the fact that so many companies believe in cloud gaming means that we will face competition. But we're still convinced that we're on the right track, for two reasons: first of all, we will score points with our large bandwidths and powerful networks. We invest billions of euros in our network every year. For cloud gaming, users need to have the lowest possible latency. In contrast to streaming movies, TV shows, and music, buffering is not possible here. My controller actions have to be reflected in the game without any major delays, or gamers will not have the best possible experience. We benefit from our pioneering role in edge services here, in which data processing is shifted to the edge of the network. We can already keep latency under 50 milliseconds, but we're not stopping there. MagentaGaming will also play a major role on mobile – with LTE, but in particular with 5G. Our 5G expansion is moving at full throttle. In the future, low-latency cloud gaming will become possible for more and more people, even on the go. You'll hear more from us about gaming and 5G at IFA in September.
Secondly, we also believe in co-existence on the gaming market. Just because someone plays on one cloud gaming service doesn't mean they might not use a second one, or even a third. After all, Netflix isn't the only streaming service for movies and TV series. The number of games is enormous and continues to grow. And the gaming market is highly fragmented.
Gaming is very important to us
We have partnered with the eSports team SK Gaming for over a year now. We also collaborate with Niantic, the makers of Pokémon GO. And thanks to our successful StreamOn Gaming offering, our customers can play without hitting data caps. We are now taking the next step with MagentaGaming. And the money customers save on hardware can be spent on new sporting goods instead – even e-athletes have to keep in shape by jogging, playing tennis, or cycling outdoors, after all. That’s one thing the data center can't do for them (yet)!
