Falling bandwidth prices and growing broadband penetration are the main drivers behind the rapid growth in SA's online gaming space.
This is according to Reinhard Rheeder-Kleist, games master and server administrator for Internet service provider (ISP), Web Africa.
He says faster and cheaper connectivity is spurring widespread interest in what was once a niche hobby.
While a gamer's first choice for connectivity should be an ADSL line, according to Rheeder-Kleist, he adds that the uncapped ADSL packages gaining popularity in recent months are not ideal for competitive online gamers.
The reason for this, he says, is that most uncapped offerings have high contention ratios, meaning more users are competing for a slice of bandwidth from the ISP than most capped offerings. He notes that capped packages are more expensive but offer better performance.
“Aggressive traffic shaping and high contention ratios could lead to lacklustre network performance for gamers during times of the day when the network is busy.”
For gamers who want to compete on international servers, Rheeder-Kleist says they should consider unshaped packages to ensure the lowest possible ping times. “Many gaming pros have standard shaped or unshaped accounts for Web browsing and downloads and also buy some of the more expensive unshaped bandwidth for gaming online on international servers,” he notes.
Rheeder-Kleist expects strong growth in the online gaming market in the months ahead, coming off the back of big titles such as StarCraft 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops. In addition, Microsoft's plans to release the Xbox Live online gaming service in SA later this year is expected to introduce console gamers to the world of online gaming.
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