How the Video Game Industry Drives DC Location Decisions
November 30, 2020
It’s natural to expect more data center capacity is needed to handle the boom in e-commerce, streamed programming and virtual meetings since the pandemic arrived. But there’s another subset of screen-based transactions that requires that expansion too.
Statista reports there are an estimated 2.7 billion video gamers around the world in 2020. The largest proportion of these gamers, some 55% or 1.5 billion players, live in the Asia Pacific Region. North America, with 8%, claims just over 200 million gamers. Total prize money in 2018 for e-sports was $1.5 billion, with the 2018 League of Legends World Championship Finals reaching 99.6 million viewers across 19 languages.
QTS Realty Trust, a data center REIT based in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, Kansas, says the gaming industry is forecast to be a $165 billion market this year. CBRE values the U.S. market at $36 billion. QTS says, “the promise of 5G may have the greatest impact as it is expected to allow cloud-based gaming to shed many of its technical constraints.”