Gaming is more popular than ever. In fact, one out of every five people, or roughly 3 billion individuals, are now active gamers. And this is just the start of what’s to come, with games becoming faster and more accessible to users in high-growth emerging markets.
But while interest in gaming is skyrocketing, many parts of the world still lack access to stable, competitive network environments. As console, PC, and mobile games continue to evolve and become more interconnected and resource-demanding, network performance is becoming increasingly important.
Acceleration providers now have a massive opportunity to help gamers in emerging markets. Let’s take a closer look at gaming in emerging markets, why demand is growing for game acceleration, and how Zenlayer positions global game acceleration providers for success.
By the numbers: Gaming in global emerging markets
With user growth slowing in developed markets, the gaming industry is now looking to emerging economies for growth opportunities. Regions like Asia Pacific, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America offer rapidly growing digital populations with millions of potential customers.
Here is a snapshot of gaming in emerging global markets.
· APAC dominated the global gaming market in 2022, generating $84.8 billion.
· Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) grew at 3.3% and 5.8%, respectively in 2022.
· Gaming revenue is on pace to reach $3.6 billion in Latin America this year, up from $2.23 billion just five years ago — representing a 61% increase. Some of the top countries for gaming within Latin America include Brazil, Mexico, Chile, and Colombia.
· Gaming revenue in MENA is projected to reach nearly $2.8 billion by 2026, which is a 56% increase from 2022.
The growing need for acceleration in gaming
When it comes to gaming, network performance is crucial for success. Even the smallest bit of lag or latency can disrupt gaming experiences and prevent users from competing. Gamers in global emerging markets now expect an even playing field, with access to the same robust connectivity that gamers in developed markets enjoy. But this isn’t always possible due to a lack of local network infrastructure.
This is where game acceleration services come into play. Many gamers now depend on acceleration providers to overcome infrastructure barriers and performance issues. Acceleration services use a mix of machine learning, virtual private networks, performance-based routing, real-time monitoring, predictive route optimization, and packet-level optimization to stabilize gaming environments for players that live in locations with spotty, poor-performing public networks.
How Zenlayer improves game acceleration services
Despite having optimal market conditions, game acceleration providers still face several challenges. Some of these include:
· Forming partnerships with game developers and server [GB1] providers for direct connectivity.
· Providing reliable and consistent performance across different gaming platforms and devices.
· Achieving cost-effectiveness while maintaining a global infrastructure and scaling resources to meet fluctuating user demand.
It’s possible to overcome these challenges by partnering with a game acceleration enabler like Zenlayer, offering global edge node coverage, reliable and high-performance networking, and easy access to scalable infrastructure. Zenlayer helps provide seamless digital experiences with minimal latency, keeping gamers happy no matter where they are.
Here are some of the ways that Zenlayer helps game acceleration providers.
Global coverage
Zenlayer offers a massively distributed global network that spans more than 110 cities and over 50 countries across six continents, along with strategically placed data centers throughout key markets and emerging regions.
In addition, Zenlayer maintains partnerships with 5,400+ global peers for connecting directly to game servers worldwide. This drastically reduces the distance between players and game servers and reduces the number of hops that data must travel. It also helps minimize latency to ensure smoother gaming experiences for players.
Industry experts
The Zenlayer team is serious about gaming, which is why the company is so passionate about network performance.
Zenlayer’s now works with some of the world’s biggest game developers and publishers. Zenlayer hosts thousands of servers for some of the hottest games on the market today like PUBG, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, Free Fire, and more.
High-speed connectivity
Zenlayer’s global, private backbone eliminates packet loss and reduces latency and jitter by up to 40% compared to public networks.
The network also has built-in redundancy to improve uptime and fault tolerance and keep connections stable between players and game servers.
What’s more, Zenlayer uses dynamic engineering to optimize traffic flow in real time. This helps distribute peak-hour traffic to prevent congestion and ensure that all players can enjoy consistently reliable, high-performance gameplay with minimal latency.
Instant scalability
It’s possible to provision Zenlayer’s suite of cloud computing products within minutes across more than 60 cities around the world. Acceleration providers can instantly expand coverage and scale to meet user demand. With Zenlayer, you can avoid costly and time-consuming network builds.
Zenlayer also offers competitively priced bare metal offerings, ranging from single Intel Xeon E3/E5 processors with 32 GB of RAM up to dual Intel Xeon Gold processors with 512 GB of RAM.
Zenlayer’s our highly customizable VMs start from 1-core with 2GB of RAM and go up to 64-core with 128 GB of RAM. Zenlayer compute makes it easy to try new markets, test new services, and acquire new global users.
Scale and acquire new users faster with Zenlayer
Developers today love pushing the limits of the latest hardware, while gamers demand instant, high-quality gaming experiences. Game acceleration services must therefore continuously improve and optimize their platforms to win customers and stay competitive.
Zenlayer’s global network now has more than 5,400 global peers, and features the best carriers from each region for maximum performance and reliability. At the same time, Zenlayer’s ultra-low latency edge compute service helps providers keep game and player data close to their source locations. And on top of that, customers can relax with 24/7 live tech support.
So, if you’re looking for an acceleration partner to support global gamers, Zenlayer is standing by to help. To learn more, check out our gaming infrastructure eBook. And if you have any questions, talk to a solution expert.
