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Company Success Stories - NCsoft
AMD Helps NCsoft® Declare Victory in Online Gaming Industry
Profile
NCsoft
"The AMD Opteron™ processor helped launch City of Heroes® and City of Villains™ online video games with astounding success. By supporting more than tens of thousands of simultaneous users with zero server down time, AMD64 helped place both games among the most popular Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) and grow our subscriber base in the U.S. alone to more than two million users. In addition, AMD’s technological superiority is complemented by the industry’s best price/performance and performance-per-watt — allowing NCsoft® to take a leadership position in the competitive MMOG market without paying a hefty IT ransom.” — Peter Jarvis, chief information officer, NCsoft"
Challenge:
- NCsoft® is a leading developer and publisher of online games. Described by NCsoft Chief Information Officer Peter Jarvis as “an ASP for gamers,” the company was intent to capitalize on a rapidly-growing market by launching a series of innovative Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) titled City of Heroes® and City of Villains™.
- MMOGs are played via the Internet by hundreds or thousands of people simultaneously. Previous MMOG launches by competitors experienced failures in service as the infrastructures supporting the games collapsed under the influx of users.
- Critical to NCsoft’s success was a powerful infrastructure that could support countless users while keeping overall costs low. Cost was a major concern for NCsoft for two reasons: the company’s data center providers charged a premium for high density power and cooling, and NCsoft planned to migrate to a 64-bit dual-core architecture.
- NCsoft also required a standards-based infrastructure that would provide investment protection, offering a seamless upgrade path to 64-bit computing and flexibility to better manage an ever-increasing number of customers across several products.
Solution:
- Extensive benchmarking revealed that the AMD Opteron™ processor delivered superior performance and performance-per-watt.
- “Our data center providers charge a premium for high density power and cooling, so naturally keeping that cost to a minimum was a priority for NCsoft,” said Jarvis. “The AMD Opteron processor was by far the most powerful processor technology available for our gaming applications and consumed the least amount of energy. Our research proved that, in a three-year period, the AMD Opteron processor would deliver the lowest possible total cost of ownership (TCO).”
Impact:
- Running on the AMD Opteron processor, NCsoft introduced both City of Heroes and City of Villains to the public amid outstanding results. “Prior to City of Heroes, the vast majority of competitors’ MMOGs crashed during their launches because the companies’ infrastructures could not handle the surge in volume,” said Jarvis. “The AMD Opteron processor delivered a flawless execution by supporting two simultaneous game launches with tens of thousands of simultaneous users within days of launch — a feat unheard of until City of Heroes.” NCsoft continues with this trend by supporting more than one hundred thousand global users simultaneously every day on AMD Opteron processors throughout the company’s product lines.
- The system, which also supports Guildwars, delivered superior performance at lower overall costs; NCsoft attributes the increased performance to helping the company acquire more than two million customers.
Organizational Profile
Headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, NCsoft Corporation is the world’s leading developer and publisher of online games. Founded in 1997, NCsoft is home to Lineage®, City of Heroes®, and City of Villains™, which are among the world’s most successful online roleplaying games. NCsoft has joint venture offices located in Japan, Taiwan, and China, as well as branches in North America and the United Kingdom. In fiscal year 2005, NCsoft posted revenues of KRW338 billion, or approximately US$346 million.
For more information, please visit www.plaync.com
Challenge
Described as “an ASP for gamers” by NCsoft Chief Information Officer Peter Jarvis, the company is a leading developer and publisher of online games. DFC Intelligence, a game-industry research company, predicted the worldwide-online-gaming market could surge to $6.8 billion by 2011. As such, NCsoft was intent to capitalize on the rapidly-growing online gaming market by launching a series of innovative Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) titled City of Heroes and City of Villains. MMOGs are played via the Internet by hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously.
Previous MMOGs were exclusively medieval-themed but City of Heroes, the first game the company prepared to unveil to the public, offered something new: an MMOG based on the comic book genre, where players could create their own unique super-powered heroes and defend citizens of a contemporary city. The company planned to introduce City of Villains, the stand-alone sequel in which evil characters could play against characters from City of Heroes, shortly after the successful launch of City of Heroes.
With such a leap from traditional MMOGs, the company required a launch that was flawless — a challenge in today’s demanding and competitive ASP gaming environments. Prior to City of Heroes, the vast majority of competitors’ game launches experienced a failure at some point as their IT infrastructures failed to handle the dramatic influx of users. “Players download the game client and play against the back-end infrastructure. As we can have tens of thousands of users playing together, we needed to provide immediate access for our gamers, particularly in our ‘city zones’ where users log in,” said Jarvis. “If there is any delay in signing up, especially for a unique genre, we can lose those customers — sometimes for good.”
In addition to requiring a robust infrastructure that could support tens of thousands of simultaneous users, the company aimed to keep IT costs low. Cost was a large concern for NCsoft for two reasons: the company’s data center charged for power and cooling, and NCsoft planned to migrate to a 64-bit dual-core architecture.
NCsoft required a standards-based infrastructure that would provide investment protection, offering a seamless upgrade path to 64-bit computing and flexibility to better manage an ever-increasing number of customers.
Solution
Extensive internal benchmarking revealed that the AMD Opteron™ processor delivered superior performance and performance-per-watt — the latter of which was especially critical for keeping costs low. As such, AMD Opteron processor-based servers running current hits like City of Heroes and City of Villains will provide the foundation for launching new, eagerly anticipated games such as Auto Assault.
Specifically, the company created an infrastructure based on more than 1,000 AMD Opteron processors powering AMD64 technology-based systems.
“Our data centers charge for power and cooling, so naturally that was a primary issue for us to address,” said Jarvis. “The AMD Opteron processor was by far the most powerful technology and consumed the least amount of energy. Our research proved that, in a three-year period, the AMD Opteron processor would deliver the industry’s lowest total cost of ownership (TCO).”
Impact
NCsoft introduced both City of Heroes and City of Villains to the public amid outstanding results. Unlike other MMOG launches, NCsoft’s games experienced zero server down time, even during peak usage. “Prior to City of Heroes, the vast majority of competitors’ MMOGs crashed during their launches because the companies’ infrastructures could not handle the surge in volume,” said Jarvis. “The AMD Opteron processor delivered a flawless execution by supporting tens of thousands of simultaneous players — a feat unheard of until City of Heroes.”
Jarvis elaborated on the performance: “The textbook introductions of our games helped us build a stellar reputation in the highly competitive gaming industry. Being able to support so many users provides a better gaming experience for our customers, which has contributed to building NCsoft’s subscriber base to more than two million customers.”
AMD’s HyperTransport™ technology, integrated in every AMD Opteron processor, provided a scalable bandwidth interconnect between processors, I/O subsystems, and other chipsets to deliver exceptional performance levels. Additionally, it also offered lower power consumption (1.2 volts) to help reduce NCsoft’s system’s thermal budget, which contributed to overall lower power and cooling bills. “Within 36 months of deploying our games on the AMD Opteron processor we noticed up to a 30 percent reduction in overall costs, particularly in terms of power and cooling,” said Jarvis.
Additionally, the AMD Opteron processor provided essential investment protection both in terms of the flexibility of the system and keeping costs low as the company upgraded to a 64-bit architecture. “When we launched City of Villains we knew, based on industry buzz, there would be a major increase in system usage,” Jarvis said. “But we were still supporting thousands of players already with City of Heroes and Lineage. The AMD64-based blade servers allowed us to manage the usage and ensure our customers experienced zero downtime.”
Also, as the company migrated to 64-bit Microsoft® SQL Server 2005, the combination of AMD64 and Microsoft helped the company address much more memory without needing to upgrade to a costly new operating system.
“The AMD Opteron processor helped launch City of Heroes and City of Villains online video games with astounding success. By supporting more than tens of thousands of simultaneous users with zero down time, AMD64 helped place both games among the most popular Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOG) and grow our subscriber base to more than two million users. In addition, AMD’s technological superiority is complemented by the industry’s best price/performance and performance-per-watt — allowing NCsoft to take a leadership position in the competitive MMOG market without paying a hefty IT ransom.” — Peter Jarvis, chief information officer, NCsoft
About AMD
Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is a leading global provider of innovative microprocessor solutions for computing, communications and consumer electronics markets. Founded in 1969, AMD is dedicated to delivering superior computing solutions based on customer needs that empower users worldwide. For more information visit www.amd.com.
AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Opteron, and combinations thereof, are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. HyperTransport is a licensed trademark of the HyperTransport Technology Consortium. Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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