India poised to be at the center of metaverse-based gaming

Being the world’s top gaming market, India will emerge as a hot destination for metaverse apps. Metaverse will not only help the gaming market flourish, but create business opportunities for software vendors, device vendors, and game publishers

The government of India envisions a bright future for gaming in India. A task force for the Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, and Comics (AVGC) sector has been announced in Budget 2022 to fulfill that vision. Being the world’s top gaming market, India is likely to emerge as a hot destination for metaverse apps too, feels Rituparna Mandal, General Manager, MediaTek Bangalore. She explains how metaverse is likely to impact the future of gaming in India and how MediaTek is gearing up to deliver the most advanced chips technology and solutions to the metaverse ecosystem.

Opportunities unleashed by the Metaverse

The term “metaverse” was coined by Neal Stephenson in 1992, who visualized it as the next digital revolution after the Internet, where the real and virtual worlds will virtually merge. Now, after three decades, that virtual reality (VR) concept has become a reality with the potential to add innovation and value to every aspect of living.

In simple terms, a metaverse is a network of 3D virtual objects interacting with each other, but from a broader perspective, it is a combination of technologies including AR/VR, blockchain, AI, animation, comics, online gaming, and social media.

Metaverse introduces several possibilities for consumer and business segments. Some of the top applications for consumers include gaming, social media, virtual shopping malls, virtual events/shows, real estate tours, immersive online classrooms, etc.

For businesses, top applications include: virtually augmented workplace for better engagement and collaboration; training platforms for medical, military, and research; augmented reality ads for better impact; digital humans to perform multiple tasks such as onboarding employees, customer service, sales, and other business interactions. In fact, a survey by Unsupervised, an analytics automation company, reveals that 61 percent of the markets want to market their brands in the metaverse.

For industries, metaverse in the 5G/6G era will open new opportunities with trends like Industry 4.0, Web 3.0, and NFTs. For telecom operators, metaverse opens new opportunities to deliver value-added meta-services. A report by Credit Suisse has found that the new digital ecosystem in metaverse will push data usage by 20 times across the globe by 2032, further expand screen time and drive more bandwidth consumption. 

Metaverse is perceived as the next big opportunity for startup investments.  Startups focusing on areas like gaming, blockchain & NFTs, social apps, entertainment, and analytics are gaining traction in India. India can also build opportunities in metaverse-related software exports. Goldman Sachs estimates an $8 trillion metaverse opportunity for s/w exports for Indian IT cos.

Metaverse powering the future of Gaming

Much before metaverse became popular, VR games like Minecraft and Roblox had captivated scores of young gamers. The immersive gaming experience delivered by AR/VR and the rapid growth of devices powered by AR/VR and XR has further accelerated the growth of metaverse to the current level. Meanwhile, the growth of high-speed Internet has acted as the catalyst driving this transformation. While VR heads top the list of gaming devices in the metaverse, mobile phones, gaming PCs, gaming consoles, and hearable/wearables are also evolving to suit the demands of metaverse applications.

Metaverse also blends games with other apps like live streaming, cryptocurrencies, and social media, creating several possibilities for players to transact across the ecosystem chain. For example, gamers can use the NFTs/cryptocurrencies in metaverse to purchase digital assets, which they can preserve for another game, maybe from a different publisher. Thus players will earn greater value for money while also enjoying a near-real world gaming experience with possibilities never imagined before. Thus metaverse also has the potential to promote eSports and create several gaming professionals.

Being the world’s top gaming market, India will emerge as a hot destination for metaverse apps. As per the April 2022 statistics from SensorTower, India stays at the No. 1 position for global game downloads, which accumulated approximately 783 million installs, or 16.6 percent of total worldwide downloads. Metaverse will help the gaming market in India to flourish further by creating business opportunities for software vendors, device vendors, and game publishers also in the process.

Building blocks of the Metaverse

The four key building blocks of metaverse include software, hardware, supporting technologies, and network infrastructure. 

Gaming software tools, game engines, and software libraries help in the creation of assets, characters, gameplay physics, icons, sound effects, help screens, buttons, and much more. In metaverse games, the software becomes more sophisticated in order to support advanced technologies like AR/VR and cryptocurrencies and advanced movements like tactile sensation in a 3D environment. 

Metaverse hardware will be dominated by AR/VR headsets, but other devices like mobile phones, gaming PCs, and gaming consoles also grab a fair share by supporting standalone VR gaming applications. Already there is a belief that future smartphones will be replaced by AR devices, and personal computers could be replaced with VR gadgets. However, in order to turn that dream into reality, the technology and components should be improved drastically so that they can achieve the price-to-performance standards acceptable to average users.

With regard to metaverse technology, both hardware and software technologies come into play. Being the fundamental building block, processor technology emerges as the most important in this domain. MediaTek is focusing on this line. Apart from this, hardware tech associated with display and computing units also plays a significant role in building the metaverse ecosystem. As mentioned before, metaverse also blends AR/VR, blockchain, NFTs, IoT, AI, and Analytics. Among these, NFTs garner massive interest due to the impact they can bring to the gaming economy.

Networking technologies, last, but not least, act as the backbone of the metaverse. Like the Internet, the metaverse has the power to sweep the entire universe, so connectivity is integral. In India, the metaverse is expected to thrive in the era of 5G, provided that the government and the operator community clear the way for ample investment for the effective utilization of the 5G spectrum.

How MediaTek is gearing up for the Metaverse era

The metaverse era demands higher computing power and a low-latency network environment to enable large amounts of data transfer with better graphics capabilities. This will create the demand for more computing resources like storage and CPU/GPU and advanced network capabilities like 5G, WiFi 6, and higher.

With over 25 years of experience in the chip industry, MediaTek has the advantage of using its IP and resources to develop platforms to support the latest trends including metaverse. MediaTek’s chipsets are already capable of offering metaverse capabilities in terms of processor speed, computing power, and power consumption.

Mediatek also has gained an edge in 5G, multimedia, and network capabilities. For example, the latest 5G chipset Dimensity 9000 that is built on TSMC’s 4nm processor technology features an octa-core CPU and an Arm Cortex-X2 that bursts to epic 3.05GHz, while large, layered caches in the chip and the latest LPDDR5X memory makes data immediately available, eliminating the wait to give immediate responsiveness in any app, while also improving overall power efficiency to an unimaginable level.

Metaverse will mark a new beginning for the devices ecosystem, not just the VR headsets but other wearables too. Since metaverse requires a lot of chips with extreme performance capabilities, a number of innovations are expected in chip technologies in the coming years. There will be a huge demand for processors and high-performance chip components, especially those that support the latest and upcoming generation of networks like 5G, 6G, WiFi6, and higher. Being a leader in chip innovation, MediaTek is prepared to deliver the most advanced technology and solutions to the metaverse ecosystem.

Rituparna Mandal, General Manager, MediaTek Bangalore