Xu Heng, Qualcomm: Communication technology will help solve the pain points of digital entertainment and enrich the future user experience.

On July 30th, 20021China International Digital Interactive Entertainment Exhibition ChinaJoy officially opened. This conference attracted newcomers from all over the world to celebrate this "gamer" festival. As the main force in today's game industry, mobile games have become the most common way for many people to play everyday, so the hardware iteration of mobile phones has also affected the development of the game industry. Especially in the past two years, 5G high-speed network has been rapidly popularized in China, and the industrial form of the game industry from B-end to C-end has undergone earth-shaking changes. As a leader in 5G and mobile phone chip technology, Qualcomm has been deeply involved in game-related industries with its partners for many years. On this occasion, Xu Heng, Senior Director of Product Marketing of Qualcomm Science and Technology Company, delivered a speech with the theme of "5G opens new opportunities for digital entertainment industry" at the Global Cloud Game Industry Conference held at the same time.

Xu Heng, Senior Director of Product Market of Qualcomm Science and Technology Company.

Xu Heng said that the speed of 5G deployment has actually exceeded everyone's imagination, mainly because the pace of development from 1G to 4G in the past was usually steady for ten years. However, after entering the 5G era, more than 165 operators around the world have launched 5G commercial services, and more than 270 operators are deploying 5G. In China alone, as of June, 20021year, the cumulative number of 5G base stations has reached 910.6 million, and the cumulative construction investment has exceeded 260 billion yuan; In China, the number of 5G mobile phone terminals has reached 365 million, and it is estimated that the shipment of 5G mobile phones will reach 450-550 million in 20021year. The rapid development of 5G infrastructure has laid a solid foundation for the next generation of digital entertainment innovation.

Therefore, as the world's leading wireless technology innovator, Qualcomm has changed thousands of industries through mobile technology. In the past 30 years, great changes have taken place in communication technology. From the voice call function in 1G and 2G era to the digital connection in 3G era, Qualcomm began to put the CPU of 1GHz into the SoC of the mobile phone at that time, which marked the first appearance of the connection and calculation functions on the SoC. Since then, the "mobile computer" with powerful computing power has entered the lives of ordinary people. In the next 4G era, the improvement of computing power and communication bandwidth has also brought great changes to many industries, especially the mobile Internet industry.

The game experience change brought by 5G is obvious.

At the same time, he also mentioned that the user experience empowered by mobile technology has developed to a new level. When the mobile technology collides with the traditional product form, the integration and transformation is the general trend, and it will inevitably face various opportunities and challenges. Facing the changes brought by 5G, Qualcomm has a unique vision and viewpoint, especially in digital entertainment.

In the speech, Xu Heng showed us a set of data: According to the data of Global Game Market Report 202 1 by the analysis organization Newzoo, mobile game revenue accounted for 52%, PC game accounted for 20%, and console game accounted for 28%. Xu Heng believes that one of the main reasons is that the look and feel experience of mobile games is almost the same as that of other game platforms. When the user experience of mobile devices reaches a certain level, due to its excellent experience and portability, mobile game revenue becomes the "multiplier" of the whole game industry, and keeps a high-speed and continuous growth, so it will far exceed other platforms.

Therefore, in the development of mobile games, Xu Heng believes that the changes in the game experience brought by 5G are obvious: ultra-low latency as low as milliseconds, ultra-high speed as high as 10Gbps, and ultra-wide coverage far beyond the past. It solves the pain points of previous mobile games such as high delay, packet loss and jitter, and brings users a new experience. At the same time, the ultra-wide network coverage basically blurs the physical distance and changes the way users watch entertainment content, such as live broadcast and cloud games. New entertainment projects will also usher in great changes, all of which are changes brought by 5G to the game.

Speaking of cloud games, Xu Heng said that as early as the initial promotion period of 5G, the industry predicted that "the maturity of 5G technology means that the bandwidth and delay will be greatly reduced, so cloud games and large-scale streaming media will become inevitable." From a technical point of view, the infrastructure already exists with excellent network consistency, which means that all games can go to the cloud. In this regard, Xu Heng's point of view is that "when all games go online, it will still involve many links in the whole ecosystem, including technology, content and business model. Assuming that "all cloud games are on the cloud", the AI computing power on the mobile phone should still be allocated to functions other than games, such as multimedia services such as images, which requires very high performance of the mobile phone. "

This is why most mid-to high-end mobile phones on the market support 5G functions. At the same time, these mid-to high-end mobile phones will adopt Snapdragon's 8-series, 7-series, 6-series and 4-series mobile platforms when choosing chips. On the one hand, these platforms support 5 G; On the other hand, Snapdragon has always been an industry leader in supporting the upgrade of top mobile experience. Take today's flagship chip, Snapdragon 888 5G mobile platform, as an example. It has brought unprecedented improvements in images, games, AI, network connection, security, multimedia, voice, display and sensors. At the same time, Snapdragon 888' s third-generation Snapdragon elite game functions mainly focus on super-smooth game experience, the highest HDR image quality and end-game level characteristics, and also support 144 Hz or even higher display refresh rate, sensitive touch operation and realistic and cool HDR effect with high dynamic range, thus bringing unprecedented fun to users.

In this regard, Xu Henghe revealed to us that the cooperation between chip manufacturers and content developers has become a normalization. The first operation is to introduce the end-game experience into the mobile phone. This year, Qualcomm introduced one of the end-game features in mobile games, namely variable resolution rendering, which can improve the overall visual perception of mobile games with high image quality, high frame rate and lower power consumption.

In addition to constantly moving closer to the PC gaming experience, Qualcomm Snapdragon is gradually introducing many functions such as CPU, GPU, video and AI on the mobile platform into the PC. Nowadays, Arm architecture chips have gradually occupied a place in the PC market. Some mainstream OS on the PC side began to enter the mobile ecosystem, and new OS on the PC side began to emerge. It can be seen that the advantages of PC and mobile seem to be gradually merging, and it is conceivable that PC will soon usher in greater development prospects.

The 5G digital industry brings technological upgrading.

Later, Xu Heng also talked about his views on the XR field. Xu Heng said: "Qualcomm has invested in XR for more than ten years and will continue to invest in R&D.. Compared with other industries, it is more challenging to promote the development of XR field, because all aspects such as chips, hardware devices, software platforms, content, ecology and consumer habits need to be started from scratch, and the entire XR industry ecology needs to be rebuilt. Qualcomm has launched a number of products for the XR field, such as Snapdragon XR 1 and Snapdragon XR2 platform. "

On the basis of owning chips, mainstream equipment manufacturers and software platform providers in the world and China, such as Oculus, Microsoft, Google, VIVE, etc. All of them are insisting on promoting the integration of software and hardware to create a brand-new XR ecosystem. Nowadays, the XR ecosystem is not only focusing on basic work, but also promoting more scenarios, especially having more To B application scenarios has become people's production assistance.

In the eyes of Xu Heng and Qualcomm, XR is not only a way of entertainment, but also a product direction that can achieve the ultimate mode of communication. The so-called ultimate way of communication is to create a scene comparable to face-to-face communication and carry out the most effective communication. However, the current communication mode still has a long way to go. Xu Heng explained a little idealistically: "In this respect, the ultimate goal of the communication industry is to break through the limitations of time and space."

Finally, Xu Heng said that the technology upgrade brought by 5G to the digital entertainment industry has been going on continuously and achieved quite good results, "empowering an excellent experience. When the network supports millisecond delay, nearly infinite bandwidth and network coverage without dead ends, it will give birth to richer entertainment applications, more immersive interaction methods and new social ways. " In the 5G era, advanced technical features need to rely on landing applications, and at the same time, more stringent requirements are put forward for technologies and ecosystems and related content providers, "making accurate judgments on industry trends and providing more refined products." It is the best response for related manufacturers to embrace the 5G era.