Indian telecom firm Jio pushes for cloud gaming

Over the past three decades, Mukesh Ambani, one of the wealthiest individuals in Asia, has made a mark in a variety of businesses. He currently seems to be focusing on the gaming industry.

JioGames, a component of the Jio telecom platform from Reliance Industries, announced on Thursday that it has signed a 10-year strategic agreement with Gamestream. According to Jio, the French company would collaborate with the Indian behemoth to make a “ambitious” push at reaching India’s “1.4 billion” people with cloud gaming. Jio’s company provides clients with white-labeling cloud gaming solutions.

The cloud gaming platform JioGamesCloud, which is presently in beta and accessible to users across a variety of devices, will be scaled up, according to Jio, with the aid of the cooperation. Late last year, the business discreetly launched JioGamesCloud in beta, providing hundreds of games (though very few AAA titles). Currently free during its beta testing phase is JioGamesCloud.

Ubisoft is one of Gamestream’s partners. Through partnerships with Etisalat, Telkom, Sunrise, and Telekom Slovenije, Gamestream has introduced its technology in numerous regions around Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

“Due to the quick rollout of Jio’s True 5G network, which offers high speed and low latency in India, the country will soon become the new center of the video game industry, with a potential player base of over 1 billion. In a statement, Jio Platforms CEO Kiran Thomas said that video games “may become one of the digital businesses that contribute considerably to economic growth.”

“With the help of this collaboration between Gamestream and Jio, every Indian will have access to a top-notch cloud gaming experience.”

India, the second-largest internet market in the world, is not necessarily a particularly alluring market for video games. (India typically receives new PlayStation and Xbox systems later than other countries. Google never bothered to introduce its scrapped Stadia platform to the market in South Asia. There is no presence of Nintendo in the nation.)

But due to the proliferation of inexpensive Android smartphones and low-cost mobile data rates, mobile gaming has become very popular in India in recent years. With up to 50 million monthly active players, Krafton’s PUBG Mobile was the most played game in the nation before New Delhi banned it over national security concerns.

In India, Amazon launched Prime Gaming last month, a membership service that gives users access to a variety of games. The gaming service provides free access to a variety of mobile, PC, and Mac games as well as in-game goodies for Amazon Prime and Video subscribers.