How Zenlayer Bare Metal Cloud Helps Gaming Companies Grow Users in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia’s gaming market is surging, thanks to increasing smartphone adoption and high-speed connectivity throughout the region. It’s also the fastest-growing eSports market in the world, with the industry on pace to reach $72.5 billion in 2024 — up from just $39.2 million in 2021.
Here are some quick facts about Southeast Asia’s gaming market:
· The Southeast Asia gaming market is growing at a CAGR of 16.2% through 2028.
· The region is on pace to reach about 320 million PC and mobile gamers in 2023.
· Over 82% of Southeast Asia’s urban online population are now gamers, while 70% of overall online consumers in Southeast Asia play games.
· The most popular titles in Southeast Asia right now are cross-platform, multiplayer online co-operative games.
As these figures indicate, Southeast Asia offers massive growth potential for gaming companies. However, as many gaming companies are learning the hard way, Southeast Asia — like many emerging markets — comes with its share of challenges that can get in the way.
Read on for the top issues facing gaming providers in Southeast Asia right now, and how Zenlayer can help overcome them.
Key challenges for gaming companies in Southeast Asia
High costs
It’s common for gaming companies to face high costs in Southeast Asia. On one hand, building infrastructure can be very expensive, especially when factoring in the added costs of working with multiple providers, labor, real estate, and power. At the same time, companies that are entirely cloud-based also face higher costs when working with hyperscalers. Gaming companies often wind up overpaying for things like bandwidth, connectivity, and demand during peak usage times. Some cloud providers may also pass along charges related to regulatory compliance in certain countries.
Performance issues
Customers today expect fast, seamless gaming experiences without performance issues like lagging and jitter. Gamers are quick to abandon games that are slow and unresponsive.
Performance issues are common in Southeast Asia due to the region’s underdeveloped connectivity landscape. Many areas lack robust supporting infrastructure. In addition, there is insufficient peering across local ISPs, and poor last-mile connectivity.
While companies often try to streamline deployments through the public cloud like AWS and Azure, many large urban hubs are still largely underserved. Deploying through the public cloud doesn’t always guarantee strong connectivity.
Limited flexibility
Southeast Asia is a complex market, with many different locations and user hubs. Gaming providers need to be able to quickly spin up servers in different locations like Singapore, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, and Kuala Limpur to reach local gamers and drive growth.
But gaming providers often lack flexibility to enter new markets in Southeast Asia due to infrastructure limitations and regulatory barriers. For example, countries have different laws and regulations regarding things like data privacy and content censorship. As a result, gaming companies often struggle to move quickly and capitalize on new opportunities in Southeast Asia.
Security challenges
Gaming companies are now top targets for cybercriminals due to the vast amounts of data that they are collecting. This is especially true in Southeast Asia, where cybercrime is surging.
Because of this, gaming companies need to use caution when deploying computing services in Southeast Asia. At the same time, gaming companies are at risk for regional distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in, which can lead to network downtime.
Solution: Zenlayer Bare Metal Cloud
Most gaming companies today lack the resources to quickly expand into emerging markets like Southeast Asia without the help of a trusted technology partner. Attempting to expand into Southeast Asia on your own is expensive, time-consuming, and risky.
The better approach is to work with an edge cloud provider like Zenlayer which offers premium on-demand bare metal servers throughout Southeast Asia including hard-to-reach locations where millions of gamers are located.
By leveraging Zenlayer Bare Metal Cloud — which combines the high-performance computing power of bare metal with cloud flexibility — gaming providers can instantly access distributed infrastructure and seamlessly expand their user base throughout the region.
Here is a breakdown of where Zenlayer offers cloud compute in southeast Asia.
Zenlayer’s flexible and competitively priced bare metal servers offer a range of specifications, from single Intel Xeon E3/E5 Processors with 32 GB of RAM up to dual Intel Xeon Gold Processors with 512 GB of RAM. They are also easy to deploy from the zenConsole, and come with 24/7 live tech support.
In addition, Zenlayer Bare Metal Cloud connects directly to global servers and public clouds like AWS, Azure, Google, Tencent, and others. Additional connections are available through Zenlayer’s Cloud Interconnect partners like Equinix, Megaport, and Coresite. Zenlayer can also accelerate your last mile with connectivity to local ISPs, and to global transit hubs in places like Singapore and Hong Kong. With Zenlayer, you can rout user traffic directly to tier-1 carriers and provide high-quality streaming experiences for local users.
Many gaming providers are now deploying Zenlayer Bare Metal Cloud to expand globally into emerging markets where they lack a presence. For example, one gaming provider deployed more than 1,100 bare metal servers across five continents in just six months — including emerging markets like the Philippines. With the help of Zenlayer, the company can now focus on providing excellent digital experiences for its global clients and users without having to worry about any infrastructure deployments or maintenance issues.
Boost Your Gaming Experiences with Bare Metal Cloud
If your company is looking to expand its presence in Southeast Asia, it needs the support of a global infrastructure provider like Zenlayer. By using Zenlayer Bare Metal Cloud, your company can lower CAPEX and OPEX, and boost performance while guaranteeing optimal user experience for local gamers.
For further reading, check out Zenlayer’s eBook, Overcoming Performance-inhibiting Factors to Serve Gamers in Emerging Markets & Beyond. Or contact the team to set up a free consultation.
