The
tech tycoon, Google, enters the gaming industry by
launching its gaming platform, Stadia. Unlike Sony's PlayStation and
Microsoft's Xbox, Stadia is a cloud platform that allows players to play games
from all kinds of devices including PCs, smartphones and tablets, without any
strict requirement for high-end hardware. Google states that its digital
platform is far more powerful than any console and allows game developers to
develop games which require very high-end hardware and announces its
partnership with AMD to provide GPU for games (the news pushed AMD's share price to rise over 10%). In addition, the platform will provide better speed and quality
for game streaming.
In China, the gaming
tycoon, Tencent, increases its investment in esports tournaments in China. The
tournaments for its mobile game Honour of Kings, and PC game League of Legends
can attract 80m online viewers per match. Even given the enormous population
size, such number of audience is still amazing. Tencent has a longer history of
being interested in game streaming comparing with Google. The company has
already invested over $1bn into game streaming platforms Douyu and Huya, which
are the largest game streaming platforms in China. More than half the world's
esports fans are in Asia and China earned $163.1m revenues from esports while
the US earned $344.3m. Given the size of esports fans in China, the Chinese
market has great potential for companies to generate greater revenues from this
industry.
Gaming
is a way of entertainment and is also a relatively cheap (or at least
manageable) way. The industry will suffer less volatility from the world
economic performance, but in China is deeply affected by the regulation
environment (Tencent's market price fell when the regulators freezed commerical
video game licensing for nine months last year).
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