In a recent interview for a Ukrainian news outlet, Boosteroid, a popular independent Cloud Gaming service, discussed many details about their new server hardware and why they chose to run their own servers instead of utilizing public cloud offerings from Amazon, Google, or Microsoft.
One initial reveal is that the service now has 6 million users, including at least some in Ukraine itself.
The platform has just under 6 million active users, mostly from Europe, South and North America. According to Vlad, on a global scale, the number of Ukrainian Boosteroid users is small, but they are there and the platform is used by thousands of users.
The company has a number of different investors but have so far declined any acquisition offerings. However, they could be going public in the not too distant future.
By 2030, Boosteroid intends to go public, but, according to Vlad, this decision is still under discussion within the company. And the company does not advertise its revenues and profits publicly.
Server Hardware
In terms of servers, Boosteroid VP Vlad Kosmin had a lot to say about their new AMD CPU+GPU offering that is powering their new single 4K streaming tier.
Cloud gaming service Boosteroid has signed a $700 million deal to deploy up to 50,000 GPU servers in 10 data centers over 5 years. The initial purchase includes GPU servers based on AMD EPYC 4th generation processors and RX7900XT GPUs configured by ASUSTeK Computer Inc. and AMD for Boosteroid.
If you are doing the math, that is $14,000 per GPU server. So, each server likely contains a number of gaming class GPUs – which is the type of GPU Boosteroid is looking to utilize. Datacenter GPUs, on the other hand, typically skip out on gaming features to pack the silicon area with more compute and AI units. This is one of the main reasons Boosteroid opts to role their own servers rather than utilize the public cloud.
If you want to play a game, you need a normal desktop video card that supports technologies that are in games, in particular, frame generation, Ray Tracing, Frame Generation and others. But all this is not in professional video cards. So, if cloud gaming services use the Cloud, then the providers are also forced to use these solutions, which are very expensive and not very optimized for gaming.
With AMD, Boosteroid customized the desktop card to be used in a server. And, according to the top manager of the service, they became the first cloud gaming company to transfer the entire infrastructure to desktop cards. They will provide much more power, support for in-game technologies and cost optimization.
This all helps Boosteroid keep costs low. Boosteroid VP Vlad also had a lot of interesting things to say about the future of gaming and gaming in the cloud in particular
Broadcasting the observations of the big players of the cloud market, the top manager of the Ukrainian service says that by the early 2030s, 95% of gamer users will switch to the cloud. This process has already happened 100% with video and audio, for example, Netflix or Spotify.
In Asia, India and the countries of the East, Boosteroid has not yet been introduced, but according to Vlad, they will look in this direction in 2025.
Boosteroid is currently in an interesting dialogue with Apple about integrating into their ecosystem, and plans to master Amazon Fire TV.
It looks like an official Boosteroid App for Fire TV should be on the way shortly with the possibility of an official Boosteroid app hitting Apple devices at some point in the future. This might depend on Apple appstore policies which have recently been forced to open up in Europe where Boosteroid is based.
