Equinix is one of the companies whose datacenters form the backbone of the internet, and it has teamed up with Ubisoft’s i3D.net to speed up game performance.
Paris-based Ubisoft is one of the world’s biggest game publishers with games such as Far Cry 6, and it acquired i3D.net, an infrastructure service provider, in 2019. Equinix will use i3D.net’s low-latency network to help deal with an uptick in gaming usage of the internet.
The game market grew 23% to $177 billion in 2020 amid huge demand for games during the pandemic, as people sought gaming as an escape from real life and a way to connect with friends remotely. While that growth has tapered off some in 2021, the demand for internet connectivity that can deliver highly immersive games, deal with popularity spikes, and support esports events have increased.
i3D.net moved its gaming platform to Platform Equinix — integrating into 38 Equinix datacenters across the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe. Those are colocation centers where companies can locate their servers so that they can deliver the shortest “ping time” to consumers and enterprises that demand low latency, or faster interaction times, beyond just more bandwidth.
Interaction times matter a lot in the reality of competitive gaming. When two enemies meet on the battlefield in Call of Duty, it’s important to have precise connectivity to determine which one got the drop on the other one first. But if the game obviously stutters, then one player will get mad and blame the game company for the bad experience, as players spend a lot of time honing their skills. This is even more important at esports events, in which huge pots of money are at stake. On top of that, security is also important, said Matt George, director of segment marketing for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa at Equinix, in a statement.
Widespread cloud adoption and access have changed the way video and mobile games are developed, delivered, and played. By rearchitecting its supporting digital infrastructure accordingly, i3D.net said it can offer scalability and an instant immersive gaming experience, regardless of location.
Equinix will provide i3D.net with a global infrastructure that offers the requisite processing power and network speed to perform game development builds quickly, using a point-to-point approach. Equinix is the foundation behind the single portal that i3D.net offers its customers where they can easily scale highly customized gaming environments and traffic. It allocates gaming traffic to burst into multiple cloud accounts that gamers need from AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, through the interconnection of 40 exchanges.
Equinix has pledged to reach climate-neutral by 2030 globally. Ubisoft is also working on a carbon footprint reduction plan with a short-term goal to decarbonize their direct operations to reduce emissions by 8.8% per employee (based on 2019 levels) by 2023 and a plan for 2030.
i3D.net manages applications to over 300 million users globally and it wants to reach a billion users on its platform by 2025.