Consumers spent over Rs 2,680 crore on cloud gaming in 2018 even before Google Stadia's launch

2019 has marked the coming of age for cloud gaming. Moreover, the introduction of Google Stadia and Project xCloud show a lot of promise in the are in the coming days.

But the concept of hardware-less gaming has been around for some time now. Nvidia launched GeForce Now in 2015, which is relatively more successful with a user base of over 300,000 players and another million on the waitlist.

A report recently published by IHS Markit claims that cloud gaming has grown since its inception and is becoming a serious player in the gaming sector.

In 2018, consumers spent over $387 million on cloud gaming services, and according to the report, the number is likely to grow to $2.5 billion by 2023.

IHS Markit split cloud gaming into two categories, “cloud gaming content services and cloud gaming PC rental services”. According to the report, about 16 cloud gaming content services and cloud gaming PC rental services are operational in 2018.

Sony’s PlayStation Now was responsible for the lion’s share of the market, racking-up 36 percent of the total cloud gaming revenue in the last 12 months. Sony’s cloud gaming ambitions have only grown in 2019, especially considering the latest collaboration with Microsoft’s Azure platform

In terms of the country with the largest consumer spend, Japan led the way with gamers spending upwards of $178 million(Rs 1235 crore) on cloud gaming services in the country. Japan’s high-speed fixed and mobile broadband services were responsible for this number. The United States followed in second, while France took the third spot on the list of largest cloud gaming markets.

5G will be another important factor in cloud gaming. 5G aims to tackle one of cloud gaming’s biggest hurdles, ‘latency’. 5G promises low latency and up to 100 times the speed of 4G. This will make cloud gaming more accessible and convenient to use via mobile data networks.