Yup, this is pretty much on the mark. Game updates are sent at a fixed rate(usually 10-20Hz) so you could batch up all outgoing game state into a single dispatch. It'd probably take a bit of work re-architect the output loop(pre-allocate for max number of players to avoid per-frame allocations) but should be reasonably straightforward to implement in most engines.

Server side, yes. Client side, not so much.