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Microsoft xCloud will offer over 150 Xbox games when it goes live tomorrow
Microsoft previously said 100-plus titles would be available on day one.
Activision Blizzard pulls its games from GeForce Now
GeForce Now, NVIDIA's game streaming service, went live for everyone last week. It allows you to play hundreds of games from dozens of publishers in the cloud, but Activision Blizzard's titles are no longer among the options after the publisher asked NVIDIA to remove its titles from the service. "While unfortunate, we hope to work together with Activision Blizzard to reenable these games and more in the future," an NVIDIA staff member wrote on the GeForce Now forums.
Who will be the first Netflix for video games?
Streaming detonated the film and television industries. As recently as five years ago, the advent of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube Premium sounded the death knell for multi-billion dollar businesses, altered the living-room habits of millions of people, and changed studio production structures permanently. Companies that adapted survived, and the viewing audience received a handful of clear benefits in return -- most notably the ability to watch high-quality shows and movies on demand and, most recently, an explosion of award-winning, culturally transformative entertainment options.
Leaks reveal cloud-based 'Verizon Gaming' service
Verizon probably isn't the first name that'll come to mind when you think of video games, but the carrier apparently has big gaming plans for the future. According to The Verge, the company is working on and is already alpha testing a cloud gaming service à la PlayStation Now called Verizon Gaming. Based on the forum posts and emails The Verge saw, Verizon has been recruiting testers for a while now, giving qualified applicants a free NVIDIA Shield TV, where the service is already up and running with 135 games, and an Xbox One Controller, which works with the platform. Testers also get a $150 Amazon gift card as a reward.
EA embraces game streaming with its new 'Project Atlas' engine
EA has announced a new cloud gaming development platform called 'Project Atlas' as it eyes a video game streaming future. In a Medium post, CTO Ken Moss said the publisher has devoted a 1,000-strong team to the service. Unlike current setups where a game runs on console hardware mounted on the rack, Project Atlas will seemingly allow devs to build titles from the ground up to run on a cloud server.
EA snaps up GameFly's cloud gaming technology
It sounds like EA has big game streaming plans for the future. The gaming giant has acquired GameFly's cloud gaming technology assets and personnel, a move that will (in its own words) "enable the company to continue exploring new ways for players to access and experience games from any device." GameFly is mostly known for its video game streaming service, which it used to pitch as the "Netflix of Games." A subscription gives you unlimited access to seven titles per month, which you can play online through Samsung smart TVs, the Amazon Fire TV and other devices. To note, EA only acquired the company's technology and personnel, but it's not taking over GameFly's streaming business.
Microsoft forms a new cloud gaming division
With little fanfare, Microsoft has announced that it's launching a new gaming cloud division, a move that would set the company up to enter the world of game streaming. As The Verge reports, it's something Microsoft been building up for a while with the acquisition of small companies like PlayFab, which is focused on game development in the cloud. The company also has the basic structure of what a cloud streaming offering could look like with Xbox Game Pass, its subscription service that gives players access to large library of games for $10 a month.
A cloud service for mobile gaming isn't as dumb as it sounds
We're reached a point where cloud gaming finally makes sense. The technology that exists now is beyond what was available to famous failures like OnLive and many others you could say were ahead of their time. Servers, the consoles and computers we have in our homes, and the speedy internet connections that feed them are now capable of mimicking the experience of playing a game stored on your local machine. Big companies like Sony and NVIDIA have gotten involved over the past few years for just this reason, and one upstart believes it's spotted an unfilled niche in the market. What Spotify has done for music and Netflix for TV, Hatch wants to do for mobile gaming.
LiquidSky 2.0 beta puts any video game on any Android device
The LiquidSky 2.0 beta is live today in the Google Play Store, promising to let you play any game on any Android device via the magic of cloud streaming. Want to cruise around Grand Theft Auto 5 on your Pixel XL? Or maybe you'd rather wreck some fools in Overwatch on your Galaxy Tab S2? That's what this update is all about.
Sony plans to make PlayStation Now exclusive to PC and PS4
If you're a PlayStation Now user that doesn't actually own a PS4, get ready to cancel your subscription -- Sony just announced that its cloud gaming service is going to drop support for everything but its flagship console and Windows PC users later this year. On August 15th 2017, PlayStation Now will stop functioning on PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita and PlayStation TV as well as all Sony Bravia TVs, every Sony Blu-ray player and all Samsung smart TVs with access to the service. That's a lot of devices to drop, but Sony is optimistic about the choice, explaining in a blog post that it will help it build a better user experience on the remaining two platforms.
NVIDIA brings GeForce Now cloud gaming to Mac and PC
Ever wanted to be a PC gamer, but didn't want to buy a gaming PC? NVIDIA's Jen-Hsun Haung wants your number. Taking the stage at CES today, the CEO announced GeForce Now for Mac and PC -- an offshoot of its cloud gaming service aimed at prospective PC gamers. Despite sharing the same name as the streaming service, it offers to NVIDIA Shield users, GeForce Now for Mac and PC isn't a gaming-subscription service. It's a server rental program.
NVIDIA GRID cloud gaming service now in open beta for Shield owners in Northern California
NVIDIA Shield owners who downloaded a new software update a couple days ago not only received the ability to stream PC games over 1080p, but were also given the keys to try out NVIDIA's GRID cloud gaming service before anyone else. Similar to Gaikai and Onlive, GRID essentially lets you play games that are hosted on NVIDIA's servers rather than your home PC. Well, that service is finally out in open beta to Shield owners -- as long as they live in Northern California. NVIDIA's testing this out with just its San Jose servers for now, and you'll need a GameStream-ready 5GHz WiFi router, a minimum of 10Mbps download speed and a sub-40ms ping time to have a decent gaming experience. Those outside of the area can give it a go as well of course, as long as they're able to meet those bandwidth requirements -- the GRID beta app will run a network test to see if your connection passes muster. If you've already downloaded that aforementioned software update, you should already have the app, but you can download it separately from the Google Play Store as well.
NVIDIA's Shield now streams PC games to your TV in 1080p, has new control mapping capabilities
It was just over a month ago when NVIDIA's handheld, Shield, got the ability to stream Android games to TVs at 1080p resolution via Console Mode. Today, it can now do the same for PC games thanks to a software update that also brings improvements to 720p streaming mode and its Gamepad Mapper feature, too. Of course, the Gamestream technology that powers Shield streaming officially supports a limited number of games at the moment, with Batman: Arkham Origins, Borderlands 2 and Assasin's Creed IV: Black Flag among the highlights. In all, 63 games are currently available to stream in full HD, with more titles scheduled to be added every week. With Gamepad Mapper, users can now map motion controls to physical ones. So, instead of tilting your handheld from side to side in the games designed to do so, you can map those gyro inputs to the Shield's thumbsticks instead. And, to better let folks know of all the custom control possibilities, NVIDIA is rolling out a community beta feature that lets folks share and rate different control map profiles. Lastly, if you have a Shield and live in Northern California, you can now get in on NVIDIA's GRID beta. For folks who aren't familiar, GRID is NVIDIA's cloud gaming technology, similar to Gaikai and OnLive. So, folks with a sub-40ms ping time to NVIDIA's San Jose, Calif., servers and a minimum 10 Mbps connection through a GameStream-ready router can get exclusive access to the service's library of games on their Shield. Looks like Christmas came early, folks, so head on down to the source for the info needed to grab all the goodies.
Square Enix's streaming service uses virtual supercomputers to kill game latency
Streaming game services are nothing new, but Square Enix thinks they need a fix. Today, the company behind Final Fantasy and Deus Ex: Human Revolution (seen above) announced a new cloud gaming platform that it claims kills game latency dead. It's called Project FLARE, which it describes as a "technological breakthrough in cloud game architecture." It claims to harness the power of "virtual supercomputers" to offer powerful performance and incredible "Hollywood-level" animation that current streaming services just can't handle. Though Project FLARE is just exiting its R&D stage, Square Enix has already engaged Ubisoft as an early partner. It's currently shopping its technology around to other developers, and hopes to bring games to beta in about two years. Jacob Navok, Square Enix's director of business development, tells us the secret sauce behind Project FLARE is a technology that lets them run CPUs and GPUs in separate servers to turn up the graphic potential and efficiency of any game. In a hotel room in San Francisco, the company showed several demonstrations of this, such as incorporating video streams into Final Fantasy gameplay, real-time camera switching in Agni's Philosophy and the ability to dramatically increase the number of objects on screen in Deus Ex without affecting the game's frame rate. Since developers can now fill the screen with lots of items, Navok hopes this will result in far more realistic battle and crowd scenes in the future.
NVIDIA demos GRID streaming on OUYA, proves little boxes play big games (video)
NVIDIA champions GRID as a perfect fit for cloud gaming platforms, but we haven't had much chance to see a good use case in action. The company was more than happy to oblige at E3, however, by streaming games from GRID to an OUYA system. As Android Central caught on video, the tiny console is well-suited to the job: its Tegra 3 and gamepad can comfortably handle remote delivery of an intensive game like Borderlands 2, at least in the controlled world of a trade show. While OUYA doesn't have much (official) access to NVIDIA's GRID at present, the booth demo was a possible vision of the future. It certainly gave OUYA an escape from its hassles on the street.
LG brings Ubitus' GameNow cloud gaming to Smart TVs in the US
LG is more serious about TV gaming than many of its rivals, and it's proving that today by rolling out Ubitus' GameNow service to Smart TVs in the US. The cloud gaming portal streams a mix of mostly console-grade titles, such as Devil May Cry 4 and Dead Rising 2; it also includes free trials and support for a handful of gamepads. A free beta is available now, and the two companies are shooting for a full-fledged launch sometime in the "near future." While it's unlikely that GameNow will replace a PS4 or Xbox One for truly demanding players, we'll take the wider game library any day.
Sony will launch cloud gaming service for PS3, PS4 and Vita in 2014
Sony announced that it will provide streamed PS3 games, powered by Gaikai, to Vita, PS3 and PS4 owners next year. While it won't make the launch of the PlayStation 4, Sony says it will be "fast and responsive," and hopefully worth the wait. Follow all of our E3 2013 coverage at our event hub.
AMD unveils game streaming platform with Radeon Sky Graphics
AMD's taken some time at GDC to unveil Radeon Sky Graphics cards, the backbone of its cloud platform that streams games à la OnLive to PCs, Smart TVs, tablets and mobile devices. According to the outfit, the silicon is built upon its Graphics Core Next architecture, and is powered by its RapidFire tech to provide a "highly efficient and responsive" experience. Other details regarding the initiative are sparse, but it sounds like developers and cloud gaming companies will have to enlist the hardware before gamers can reap its benefits. Update: Joystiq's gotten word that the Radeon Sky series includes a trio of enterprise-grade graphics cards, with the top-of-the-line Sky 900 model toting 6GB of GDDR5 memory, 3,584 stream processors and sporting a memory bandwidth of 480GB per second. [Image credit: mnsc, Flickr]
OnLive's Bruce Grove on next-gen gaming, MMOs: 'We can take the leadership here'
To say the last 12 months have been a bit of a bumpy ride for game streaming service OnLive would be a bit of an understatement. However, over that time, the games continued to stream uninterrupted, and the firm seems intent on not standing still. In a recent interview, GM Bruce Grove espoused his optimism for the technology beyond general hardware vendor collaborations. The key, Grove believes, being cloud-gaming's very design, which he hopes could always offer more power than current consoles thanks to the "rafts and rafts" of CPUs at the game developer's disposal -- without the wait for new hardware iterations. More importantly, Grove's confident in OnLive's continued stability as a company -- even after nearly self-destructing. "We now have a feeling that here we are as a company, we have a huge amount of experience with this business model, we can point to the things we have seen don't work ... we have a positive feeling that we can take the leadership here," he said. It wasn't just processing prowess and company stability he was keen to talk-up; cross-platform MMOs got a mention too. Grove essentially claims that OnLive's "cracked" the problem of delivering the multiplayer format to mobile -- and other non-traditional platforms -- but implies that there are still some tangles when it comes to making the model work for his firm's particular set-up. The flexibility of cloud-based gaming has always been the central pin of its proponents' arguments, but with the boast that his firm could take the lead in this area, Grove is hinting at the direction OnLive is focusing on. We'd also point out that MMOs aren't typically the most stable of sectors in the game industry -- outside of Blizzard juggernaut World of Warcraft, few are competitive if at all successful -- and playing one through OnLive would mean paying both for an OnLive subscription and a game subscription. Grove hopes to get around that issue with an OnLive -exclusive MMO; something he's "fairly certain" will happen, but we're less sure about. Still, we've yet to hear much in the way of concrete details regarding OnLive's plans since the company imploded last summer, so we'll have to wait and see what the company's cooking up for 2013. Head through the source to Red Bull UK's full interview for even more.
Agawi and Marvell team up to bring cloud-based gaming to Android set-top boxes
It's like a match made in heaven. Agawi and Marvell have partnered up to combine a cloud-based gaming platform with the equipment that powers many popular Google TV devices. Together, both companies will offer a white-label Android gaming solution to OEMs, internet and cable providers, game publishers and retailers. As a result, we may see a number of smart TV devices begin cropping up that support Agawi's CloudPlay gaming service. Whether this solution poses a legitimate threat to the console business remains to be seen, but we're going to scour the floor at CES to bring you a demo of the system in action. In the meantime, full PR follows the break.
