We have come a long way since the first games consoles of the 80s, a golden age of gamers delivering the industry-defining Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Sega’s first major contender, the Genesis/Mega Drive. Back then you needed an 8bit processor and a games cartridge the size of Super Mario himself to be able to play.

The gaming space has certainly come a long way since that time. According to the latest industry figures from NewZoo, over half of the UK’s population can be described as ‘active gamers’, while the number of ‘gaming time’ hours being played has grown by 20% in the last year.

Google’s plans to develop an Android powered console in addition to the release of the Playstation 4 and Xbox One will only add to what is already a fiercely competitive market and contribute to the rapid evolution of the gaming industry. 

We are today witnessing the advent and evolution of more High Definition and 3D gaming content, an exciting trend that holds much promise for the industry and perhaps one that will offer the next game-changing “Wii” moment. Activision recently announced that its Call of Duty Black Ops 2™ amassed an incredible 427 million hours collectively in the game’s multiplayer suite. That’s the equivalent of 48,712 years. Such figures are impressive and are only likely to increase.

As well as recent developments on the gaming front, the industry is also witnessing a surge in the mobile gaming space. Each day in the UK, gamers spend a total of 66 million hours on their phones, according to GameHouse. This has been fuelled in part by the advent of casual gaming, with mobile gaming continuing to surge by 35% each year.

It is not only in the gaming arena that we are witnessing a re-birth of gaming, the rise of new platforms, combined with the simplicity and low cost of mobile and online games is becoming increasingly attractive to an ever growing market.

This gaming revolution is leading to a surge in network traffic, which is growing at unprecedented rates. In the shadow of this growth, network operators and end-users alike are struggling to come to terms with a high degree of uncertainty associated with what kind of bandwidth is needed, where it needs to go, when it should be delivered and how it should scale.

It is increasingly important for data centers to successfully manage data flows, prioritising types of latency-sensitive traffic such as multiplayer on line gaming. Data transfer levels generated through online gaming are already of huge significance, and the advent of future technologies, devices and platforms will undoubtedly exert capacity demands even further. This is a reality that must quickly be recognised and addressed.

Consumer services make up the majority of total bandwidth connections in support of voice, video and general Internet access. They are highly cost-sensitive and, consequently, return a relatively low profit margin to service providers. Aggregate connectivity for consumer services is fairly static, with trending network architectures using backhaul networks to aggregate multiple customers on a large backhaul connection, and then connect to a few consolidated data centres or service/application gateway locations scattered around the geographic communities of interest. Bandwidth-sharing through oversubscription of packet bandwidth is commonly used to maximize an operator’s return on investment.

Networks and data centers alike will need to evolve to be able to cope with the growing data transfer levels generated not only by the sheer volume of users playing online, but also by the rich media content required by the games themselves. The games of tomorrow will become increasingly complex, with plenty of moving parts and with the advent of more High Definition and 3D gaming content also on the horizon, such demands will only continue to grow.

Today’s enormous growth in network traffic is being fuelled by the combination of high-bandwidth applications, such as video and HD gaming, with unprecedented levels of interconnectivity. A packet optical transport network is capable of providing the required application performance while scaling to absorb this growth efficiently in all key areas of data, management and control plane operation. Improved network efficiency translates into lower cost per bit and a more competitive service offering to the client, while different class-of-service offerings translate into a greater selection of service choices.

Because the packet optical network is efficient, robust, responsive and adaptable, the end-user is left to focus on private concerns, like beating their rival’s high score or getting past level 5 in Bad Piggies™, free from the uncertainty of ever-changing underlying transport network challenges.