Facing such a question, “Who is the most famous monkey in the world now?” global E-sports players would probably smile knowingly.
Wukong, a game character born from the protagonist of the famous ancient Chinese mythological novel Journey to the West, “Monkey King” namely Sun Wukong, has swept the global 3A game market, carrying everything before it. Just three days after its release, Black Myth Wukong sold more than 10 million copies across all platforms, breaking the historical record of Chinese games. On September 20, it has sold 20 million copies on the Steam, with total revenue exceeding USD 961 million (approximately RMB 6.79 billion). In the meantime, Chinese ICT giants also use Wukong as a gimmick, working hard to fully upgrade the e-sports industry in China and even the world with the support of AI and cloud technology.
At the ongoing 2024 PT Expo China (PTEXPO), Chinese ICT giant China Mobile launched a Cloud Net-bar, which could effectively solve the problem that players’ PCs are not sufficiently configured to drive high-end 3A games such as Black Myth: Wukong.
“Cloud Net-bar, as the name implies, transfers the requirements for configuration and computing power to cloud storage. By using a small box device, we can perfectly drive this game,” a staff said.
“For our main clients, including B-side users such as Net-bars and e-sports hotels, they do not have to buy a large number of expensive hosts, thus they will greatly save operating costs by renting our computing power while providing players with the same smooth experience,” the staff added.
“Our Tianyi Cloud Esports has two major advantages. First, it relies on China Telecom’s 5G and cloud computing infrastructure to provide the lowest latency gaming experience. Second, players can enter the game at any time anywhere with an Internet connection, without spending time downloading and installing large-scale game clients,” a marketing manager from another ICT giant China Telecom told the reporter.
In China Telecom’s cloud e-sports experience area at 2024 PTEXPO, the audience only need a screen, a terminal the size of a small speaker, and spend a few yuan per hour on cloud e-sports fees to get shocking visual effects that are no less than professional e-sports desktops.
It is learned that Tianyi Cloud E-Sports provides a high-configuration computing environment based on the edge cloud base. Through streaming services, the rendered game images and operation instructions are interacted with users through the network, allowing the majority of e-sports enthusiasts and professional players to enjoy the game with extremely low-cost hardware terminals.
As a model of telling the Chinese story at a world-class level, Wukong has undoubtedly set off a new revolution in domestic e-sports industry. Nowadays, more complex game data calculations can be completed in the cloud, which greatly reduces the players’ demand for hardware configuration and expands the audience of e-sports. In 2023, the revenue of China’s e-sports industry has reached RMB 302.964 billion, as well as the number of e-sports users was about 490 million. Naturally, such a huge industry scale is fertile ground for the birth of phenomenal works. We have every reason to believe that the birth of more “Wukong” is not far away.
