Google could be the next major company to announce efforts to stream high-end games from remote servers. Kotaku cites five unnamed people familiar with the company's plans in reporting on the existence of an effort to roll out a streaming gaming platform and hardware to enable it, alongside "an attempt to bring game developers under the Google umbrella, whether through aggressive recruiting or even major acquisitions."
The Information reported similar whispers of Google's game-streaming plans back in February, saying a program codenamed Yeti had been in development for at least two years. But Kotaku adds that Google met with "several big video game companies" at March's Game Developers Conference and June's Electronic Entertainment Expo, looking to make acquisitions and attract support for the coming streaming platform. Kotaku's sources also suggest Yeti could be integrated with Google's existing YouTube services, letting users look up video walkthroughs without even leaving the game.
Since OnLive failed to build a successful business around streamed games earlier in the decade, there has been renewed interest in the idea of using high-end Internet connections to stream high-end games to cheap, low-end hardware. Sony has used its PlayStation Now service to provide streamed versions of many classic PlayStation games for years now, and Nvidia's GeForce Now offers similar cloud-based functionality for PC games.
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