Alberto Caraballo
In February 2023, Epic Games opened a Fortnite server region in Dallas, built for players in Mexico and the central United States.1 Two years later, Mexican tech media reported Fortnite players connecting to servers in Querétaro.2 One of the world’s largest publishers first served Mexico from Texas, then concluded that Texas alone was not enough.
In July, we broke down what really builds a gamer’s ping. This piece moves the question upstream, to the publisher’s deployment plan. For game publishers and cloud gaming platforms, Mexico is usually framed as a choice between Dallas and Querétaro. The traffic suggests the better answer sits somewhere that choice leaves out.
A market served from the outside
Mexico closed 2025 with 73.8 million video game players, according to The CIU, which projects 76.2 million by the end of 2026.3 Its director notes that more than 85% of Mexican players game on a smartphone.4 Across the region, Newzoo forecasts US$9.3 billion in Latin American games revenue in 2026 from 394 million players, a figure that excludes hardware and gambling and counts only spending on games and services.5
Where that audience is served from depends on the game. Riot lists Mexico City, Miami and Santiago among VALORANT’s server options for Latin America.6 And when DE-CIX upgraded its Mexico-Dallas link in June, it said the connection gives Mexican networks direct access to content, online games, clouds and networks in the United States that are not available locally.7 That is an exchange operator inside Mexico stating plainly that a meaningful part of what Mexican networks need still lives across the border.
This is not an accident. Until 2014, Mexico was the largest country in the world, and the only OECD member, without an internet exchange point, in part because competitors of the incumbent could exchange traffic in the United States instead.8 Networks built their habits around that alternative, and those habits still shape where Mexican traffic meets the rest of the internet.
Why “Dallas or Querétaro” is the wrong question
Dallas is one of the deepest interconnection markets in the United States, and Epic did not choose it by chance. But serving Mexico from Dallas makes every session depend on cross-border capacity the publisher does not control, and that capacity is under pressure: DE-CIX Mexico grew more than 400% between January and June 2026, to nearly 300 Gbit/s, and demand between the two cities triggered the Dallas upgrade.7
Querétaro makes the opposite case. It is Mexico’s cloud hub, home to the AWS Mexico (Central) Region since January 2025,9 and it holds 72% of the country’s 279 MW of operational data center capacity, according to MEXDC.10 That concentration has a cost. The CFE reported that Querétaro’s electricity demand reached 1,535 MW in 2025, against 723 MW of generation installed within the state, and new projects wait on substations and transmission lines.11
None of this makes Querétaro the wrong place to build. It makes it an incomplete answer to a two-market question. A server in Querétaro brings central Mexico closer and pushes Texas further away. A server in Dallas does the opposite.
The economics make splitting the difference expensive. Newzoo’s 2026 figures work out to roughly US$227 in revenue per player in North America and about US$24 in Latin America.12 In North America, that revenue can justify a deployment in every major metro. In Mexico, every additional site is paid for by players spending a tenth as much. The question is not only where latency is lowest, but how few deployments can serve how many players well.
The border is already where both markets meet
In 2026, MEX-IX, the internet exchange MDC operates on the border, registered a peak of more than 580 Gbps: over 515 Gbps in McAllen and over 65 Gbps in El Paso. Read next to DE-CIX Mexico’s growth, the pattern is clear. Interconnection inside Mexico is expanding fast, and the need to reach U.S. content is growing with it. Part of that demand travels to Dallas. Part of it is already exchanged at the border.
And the border is not a single point. MDC’s footprint along it spans seven facilities in six markets from San Diego to McAllen, nine international fiber crossings and 62 networks, with Mexican carriers alongside global networks, most of them from the United States. Each market faces a different part of Mexico: San Diego toward Baja California, Nogales toward the Gulf of California, El Paso toward Torreón, Laredo and McAllen toward Monterrey, and Eagle Pass on the route between Querétaro and Dallas.
The U.S. side is not a separate audience either. Hidalgo and El Paso counties rank among the five Texas counties with the largest Hispanic populations, Webb and Maverick counties, home to Laredo and Eagle Pass, were 95% Hispanic in 2020, and 83% of Hispanic Texans are of Mexican origin, according to the Texas Demographic Center.13
For a publisher, that changes the decision. A border deployment does not choose between Dallas and Querétaro. It sits between them, where Mexican carriers and U.S. networks already exchange traffic, facing players on both sides. The question stops being which country to serve from and becomes which crossing matches the audience.
Peaks decide the architecture
Averages rarely break infrastructure. Peaks do. DE-CIX’s Mexico-Dallas upgrade came ahead of the FIFA World Cup,7 and gaming has its own versions of that moment: Newzoo and The CIU both single out the November 2026 launch of Grand Theft Auto VI.4,12 Launch days, season updates and tournament finals concentrate demand on the same routes within hours. When servers sit at one end of the corridor, those peaks land on capacity the publisher neither sees nor manages.
Where this argument stops
Not every game needs to be at the border. Casual, turn-based and asynchronous titles, a large share of smartphone play, run comfortably from Dallas, Miami or Querétaro. The case is strongest where milliseconds decide outcomes: competitive multiplayer, esports and cloud gaming, where the whole game is rendered remotely and streamed to the player.
Playing somewhere else
Epic’s two moves show the industry already knows Mexican players cannot be served well from somewhere else indefinitely. The open question is whether the next deployments land at one end of the corridor or where both markets already meet.
Farther south, the map changes. Riot still counts Miami among its Latin American server options,6 and the next routes into the region are being built at sea: the MANTA subsea system will land in Cancún and Veracruz and connect Mexico City and Querétaro with Bogotá, Panama City and the United States. When those coastal gateways come online, the question this piece asks about the border will be asked about the coast.
The traffic is already meeting at the border. The question is how long the servers will keep playing somewhere else.
References
1. Epic Games, “Announcing the NA-Central Server Region for Fortnite,” Fortnite News, February 14, 2023. https://www.fortnite.com/news/announcing-the-na-central-server-region-for-fortnite
2. Xataka México, “Ya no podrás culpar al ping por perder en este battle royale: por fin tendrá servidores dedicados en México, así se accede a ellos,” February 18, 2025. https://www.xataka.com.mx/videojuegos/no-podras-culpar-al-ping-perder-este-battle-royale-fin-tendra-servidores-dedicados-mexico-asi-se-accede-a-ellos
3. Mobile Time Latinoamérica, “Smartphones impulsan el gaming en México, revela estudio de The CIU,” September 7, 2026. https://mobiletime.la/noticias/07/09/2026/gaming-en-mexico-smartphones/
4. Milenio, “Videojuegos generarán 43 mil 590 mdp en México durante 2026,” 2026. https://www.milenio.com/negocios/videojuegos-generaran-43-mil-590-mdp-mexico-2026
5. GameDev Reports, “Newzoo: The Gaming Market in 2026,” 2026. https://gamedevreports.substack.com/p/newzoo-the-gaming-market-in-2026
6. Riot Games, “Server Select,” VALORANT Support. https://support.riotgames.com/en-us/valorant/support-tools/server-select/
7. DE-CIX, “DE-CIX Upgrades Mexico-Dallas Connectivity Ahead of Record Global Demand for FIFA World Cup Streaming,” press release, June 3, 2026. https://newswire.telecomramblings.com/2026/06/de-cix-upgrades-mexico-dallas-connectivity-ahead-of-record-global-demand-for-fifa-world-cup-streaming/
8. Internet Policy Review, “Internet interconnection infrastructure: lessons from the global South.” https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/internet-interconnection-infrastructure-lessons-global-south
9. Amazon Web Services, “AWS Launches Infrastructure Region in Mexico,” press release, January 14, 2025. https://press.aboutamazon.com/2025/1/aws-launches-infrastructure-region-mexico
10. Xataka México, “Hay centros de datos en Querétaro que llevan dos años esperando algo básico: poder conectarse a la red eléctrica,” September 2026. https://www.xataka.com.mx/robotica-e-ia/hay-centros-datos-queretaro-que-llevan-dos-anos-esperando-algo-basico-poder-conectarse-a-red-electrica
11. Yahoo Noticias, “La energía añade tres años al desarrollo de un centro de datos en Querétaro,” September 2026. https://es-us.noticias.yahoo.com/energ%C3%ADa-a%C3%B1ade-a%C3%B1os-desarrollo-centro-141141044.html
12. MediaNews4U, “Global games market to reach $213.9 billion as player base hits 3.7 billion: Newzoo Report,” September 2026. https://www.medianews4u.com/global-games-market-to-reach-213-9-billion-as-player-base-hits-3-7-billion-newzoo-report/
13. Texas Demographic Center, “Hispanic Heritage Month: Hispanic Americans in Texas,” 2021. https://www.demographics.texas.gov/Visualizations/2021/HispanicHeritage/2021_HispanicHeritageGraphic.pdf
