Apple’s Vision Pro Enters The Game: Is Cloud Gaming Coming

Apple’s Vision Pro enters the game, MiHoYo “hand-picks” hardware, is cloud gaming coming? In this era, telling good stories requires not only good content, but also advanced technical performance. As miHoYo’s popular game “Honkai Star Railroad” launched an upgraded version, its cloud game “Cloud Star Railroad” was also announced to be online. Cloud game players do not need to download games or configure high-end terminal equipment. As long as the network speed is sufficient, they can enjoy high-quality graphics and improve user experience.

Apple’s Vision Pro Enters The Game

In fact, before “Clouds Star Railway”, MiHoYo’s first cloud game “Clouds Genshin Impact” has been in operation for more than two years, with over one million users in the first month and a retention rate of 80%. Domestic game manufacturers have also launched a number of cloud game versions of their own games. However, due to usage habits, network speed, charges and other reasons, cloud gaming has not yet ushered in its own golden age.

This year is a crucial year for cloud gaming. Previously, the phenomenal game “Palu” caused a server crash. Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud successively launched dedicated cloud servers, and later Apple’s mixed reality (MR) headset With the entry of the display device Vision Pro into the game, can cloud gaming usher in a real outlet and use technological support to bring a new experience to the content industry?

When Game Memory Becomes An “Unbearable Burden” On Mobile Phones.

It is becoming more and more difficult to play high-definition games on mobile phones. Installation packages that often cost dozens of GB make game memory an “unbearable burden” on mobile phones. As a result, the industry proposed a solution-cloud gaming. The so-called cloud gaming is to install the game on a dedicated server and then transmit the game screen to the mobile phone in real time. In this way, players do not need to download games, but can also experience high-definition games on low-end mobile phones.

Although the technology has long been realized, and major domestic and foreign technology companies have also tried it, the development of cloud games seems to have always been “bad”. According to the “Research Report on In-depth Observation and Trend Analysis of the Global Cloud Gaming Industry” released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology last year, the total revenue of my country’s cloud gaming market in 2018 was only 460 million yuan.

The changes come in 2021. In August of that year, “Yun·Yuanshin” was put into public beta. As of the fourth quarter, the game could support nearly 50,000 users online at the same time, the number of monthly active users reached one million, and the cumulative user online time per month exceeded 10 million hours. In 2021, the growth rate of my country’s cloud gaming market will reach 93.3%.

The popularity of “Cloud Genshin Impact” has also led various manufacturers to increase investment. NetEase and Tencent have launched their own cloud gaming platforms. In 2022, China’s cloud gaming market revenue will reach 6.35 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 56.4%; the global cloud gaming market revenue will reach 2.398 billion US dollars, a year-on-year growth of 72.8%, and the growth rate exceeds industry expectations. In 2022, the number of monthly active cloud game users in my country will reach 84.1 million, a year-on-year increase of 35.2%, and is expected to increase to 180 million by 2025.

Game Company Develops Its Own Cloud Server, Hardware Innovation Reduces User Costs.

The user scale of less than 100 million, compared with the 668 million game users in my country, still points to the fact that the golden age of cloud gaming has not yet arrived. MiHoYo also admitted that higher costs still restrict the large-scale application of cloud games.

The biggest cost of cloud gaming comes from computing power. Behind every cloud game player, there is a server carrying a heavy load. Renting a server is already expensive, and a large number of designs in the server that are not suitable for running games push up operating costs. After much consideration, miHoYo decided to develop its own cloud servers and hardware components.

“Except for major items such as CPU, graphics card, hard drive, and memory, as long as they do not meet the needs, we have chosen to develop them ourselves.” The person in charge of Mihayou Cloud Games gave an example. For example, motherboards with remote management functions are expensive and suitable for selection.

There are only a few standard models, so the company developed a universal board-level management controller to implement these functions; for example, off-the-shelf power supplies are difficult to install and maintain in batches, so the team redesigned the power supply scheme. In addition, the company also cooperates with chip manufacturers to explore possible solutions at the chip design and driver levels, so that ordinary public cloud servers can achieve the effect of high-performance servers.

After assembling the cloud game server in the laboratory, MiHoYo built a cloud server production line, where all components will be routed, assembled, lit and tested in batches, and shipped to computer rooms across the country. According to the technical team, the next generation hardware solution is on the way and will be “more suitable” for cloud games.

Will “Head-Mounted Display + Cloud Gaming” Become An Explosive New Combination In The Industry?

In the industry, miHoYo’s technology layout has always been leading. Four years ago, the concept of “multi-terminal interoperability” initiated by “Genshin Impact” has now become a “standard feature” in the gaming industry. The release of Apple’s Vision Pro headset may give a boost to the development of cloud gaming.

VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) require high-quality computing power far beyond that of ordinary mobile games. It is difficult for lightweight VR/AR devices to have strong local computing power, so they must rely on cloud servers, and games are considered It is an important carrier of VR/AR, and the two have a strong correlation.

At the beginning of this month, after Apple’s first MR headset Vision Pro was announced for sale in the United States, “Honkai Railroad” was immediately announced to be launched on the platform, and another first-person 3D game “Honkai Railroad” produced by Shanghai Game Company Paper Folding Game “Love and Deep Space” also announced the development of Vision Pro version, which can be regarded as the industry’s rapid response to the new generation of terminals.

Industry insiders believe that with the popularity of head-mounted display hardware, there will be games specially designed and built for cloud computing infrastructure, that is, “cloud native games.” As early as August 2022, Weiling Times, which provides technical solutions for “Yun·Yuanshen”, launched a demo version of the cloud native game “Spring Grass” to “throw stones at the market”.

Zhao Xing, a professor at Fudan University’s Big Data Research Institute, once said that the success of Apple’s headset as hardware depends on the emergence of a “killer application.” MiHoYo and other game companies have further “interpreted” this sentence – if there is a very good game that must rely on computing power beyond the mobile phone chip to run, and players are willing to pay for it, then “head-mounted display +” The partnership of “cloud gaming” will usher in new market space. MiHoYo is currently preparing both software and hardware for this moment.

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