SINGAPORE – 18 March 2020 – Singaporeans are binge-gaming longer than its global peers, at an average of four hours and 42 minutes, higher than the global average of four hours and 36 minutes. That’s according to the latest “State of Online Gaming” research report on worldwide consumers’ gaming behaviours and expectations from Limelight Networks Inc., a leading provider of edge cloud services.
The rise of binge-gaming has also resulted in sleepless nights with Singaporeans leading the way at almost 60 percent missing sleep, a 17 percent increase over 2019. The longer binge-gaming sessions can be attributed in part to the rise of anywhere, anytime gaming, made possible with smartphones. Mobile phones remain the primary gaming device with players in Singapore spending the majority of their playing time gaming on mobile phones, followed by computers, tablets and gaming consoles.
In addition, this year’s report identified strong interest in console-less gaming services that runs on the cloud, with 45.7 percent of respondents in Singapore saying they’re interested in subscribing.
Additional insights from the report include:
- Price and performance could hinder adoption of console-less gaming. Across the world, interest in new console-less gaming platforms is especially high among those who define themselves as experts (71 percent), and among aspiring professional gamers (77 percent). However, concerns with high price points (62.7 percent) and performance issues such as latency (16.1 percent) are cited as the top reasons players in Singapore wouldn’t subscribe.
- Watching others play video games increased in popularity for younger gamers, sparking the desire to go pro. Globally, gamers ages 18 to 25 watch others play video games online (via platforms such as Twitch or YouTube Gaming) for more than four hours each week and are the most likely to want to turn this hobby into a profession (53 percent).
- Gamers prioritise playing over many daily activities. Singaporeans are most likely to choose playing video games over sleeping (60 percent). Many consumers are also missing out on social activities (36 percent) and taking a shower (24.3%).
- Download speed is a top frustration especially for hardcore gamers. The vast majority of global gamers (87 percent) find the process of downloading games frustrating. One-third (32 percent) noted that slow download speed is their primary concern. Frustrations with download speed are the highest with expert gamers (41 percent) and aspiring professionals (58 percent).
“The popularity of mobile gaming and console-less gaming that run on the cloud is expected to exacerbate the demand for edge services to reduce game interaction latency,” said Edwin Koh, Director of Southeast Asia at Limelight Networks. “In order to power real-time interactive gaming at the edge, companies must be able to handle interactions between remote gaming servers and the player. Pivotal to this is working with a Content Delivery Network (CDN) with a globally distributed network of servers to ensure the delivery of reliable and consistent gaming experiences while ensuring optimum download performance.”
The State of Online Gaming report is based on responses from 4,500 consumers in Singapore, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States age 18 and older who play video games at least once a week. The full report is available here.
