South Korea’s No.1 mobile carrier SK Telecom said Wednesday it has joined hands with global IT software giant Microsoft to build a cloud gaming platform supported by the 5G network.

Starting next month, a pilot version of Project xCloud will be available for LTE and 5G subscribers of SKT. Users can experience various games stored in the cloud without downloading them to their devices.

At the core of the latest partnership lies the Xbox game console technology of Microsoft, according to SKT.

Supported by SKT’s 5G network, the US firm’s high-resolution games in the cloud can be accessible on smartphones instead of the previous wireless controller for console games.

SKT CEO Park Jung-ho signed a memorandum of understanding with his counterpart Satya Nadella in March, the company said.

The Korean firm will be the exclusive cloud game service provider in partnership with Microsoft here.

The mobile game sector is growing rapidly in the country, accounting for 47.3 percent of the total market as of 2018.

Korea is the fourth-largest gaming country with the market value worth about 13 trillion won ($10.8 billion).

By Song Su-hyun (song@heraldcorp.com)