We are about to see a new surge in demand for broadband as major players in the game industry have decided to move gaming to the cloud. At the recent Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco both Google and Microsoft announce major new cloud-based gaming initiatives.

Google announced Stadia, a platform that they tout as being able to play games from anywhere with a broadband connection on any device. During the announcement they showed transferring a live streaming game from desktop to laptop to cellphone. Microsoft announced the new xCloud platform that let’s Xbox gamers play a game from any connected device. Sony Playstation has been promoting online play between gamers from many years and now also offers some cloud gaming on the Playstation Now platform.

OnLive tried this in 2011, offering a platform that was played in the cloud using OnLive controllers, but without needing a computer. The company failed due to the quality of broadband connections in 2011, but also due to limitations at the gaming data centers. Both Google and Microsoft now operate regional data centers around the country that house state-of-the-art whitebox routers and switches that are capable of handling large volumes of simultaneous gaming sessions. As those companies have moved large commercial users to the cloud they created the capability to also handle gaming.

The gaming world was ripe for this innovation. Current gaming ties gamers to gaming consoles or expensive gaming computers. Cloud gaming brings mobility to gamers, but also eliminates need to buy expensive gaming consoles. This move to the cloud probably signals the beginning of the end for the Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo consoles.

Google says it will support some games at the equivalent of an HD video stream, at 1080p and 60 frames per second. That equates to about 3GB of downloaded per hour. But most of the Google platform is going to operate at 4K video speeds, requiring download speeds of at least 25 Mbps per gaming stream and using 7.2 GB of data per hour. Nvidia has been telling gamers that they need 50 Mbps per 4K gaming connection.

This shift has huge implications for broadband networks. First, streaming causes the most stress on local broadband networks since the usage is continuous over long periods of times. A lot of ISP networks are going to start showing data bottlenecks when significant numbers of additional users stream 4K connections for hours on end. Until ISPs react to this shift, we might return to those times when broadband networks bogged down in prime time.

This is also going to increase the need for download and upload speeds. Households won’t be happy with a connection that can’t stream 4K, so they aren’t going to be satisfied with a 25 Mbps connection that the FCC says is broadband. I have a friend with two teenage sons that both run two simultaneous game streams while watching a steaming gaming TV site. It’s good that he is able to buy a gigabit connection on Verizon FiOS, because his sons alone are using a continuous broadband connection of at least 110 Mbps, and probably more

We are also going to see more people looking at the latency on networks. The conventional wisdom is that a gamer with the fastest connection has an edge. Gamers value fiber over cable modems and value cable modems over DSL.

This also is going to bring new discussion to the topic of data caps. Gaming industry statistics say that the average serious gamer averages 16 hours per week of gaming. Obviously, many play longer than the average. My friend with the two teenagers is probably looking at least at 30 GB per hour of broadband download usage plus a decent chunk of upload usage. Luckily for my friend, Verizon FiOS has no data cap. Many other big ISPs like Comcast start charging for data usage over one terabyte per month – a number that won’t be hard to reach for a household with gamers.

I think this also opens up the possibility for ISPs to sell gamer-only connections. These connections could be routed straight to peering arrangements with the Google or Microsoft to guarantee the fastest connection through their network and wouldn’t mix gaming streams with other household broadband streams. Many gamers will pay extra to have a speed edge.

This is just another example of how the world find ways to use broadband when it’s available. We’ve obviously reached a time when online gaming can be supported. When OnLive tried is there were not enough households with fast enough connections, there weren’t fast enough regional data centers, and there wasn’t a peering network in place where ISPs connect directly to big data companies like Google and bypass the open Internet.

The gaming industry is going to keep demanding faster broadband and I doubt they’ll be satisfied until we have a holodeck in every gamer’s home. But numerous other industries are finding ways to use our increasing household broadband capcity and the overall demand keeps growing at a torrid pace.