Google will take the stage at the Game Developer’s Conference Tuesday morning to unveil what it’s calling its “vision for the future of gaming”—and the search giant is hoping to reach as wide an audience as possible.
Google will stream the keynote live, starting at 10 a.m. PT/ 1 p.m. ET on YouTube. Details of the announcement have been kept under tight wraps, but Google is widely expected to reveal details about a game streaming service.
Google, at the end of 2018, tested such a service under the name of Project Stream. Games were run on cloud servers and streamed directly to players’ PCs, tablets, TVs, or pretty much anything with a screen. That’s fairly typical with films and programs these days, but the interactive nature of games (and the historically laggy qualities of most internet connections ) have made it impractical.
Care to watch the announcement? You can view it here:
Google’s hardly alone in its interest the streaming space. Sony already has a streaming service called PlayStation Now. And Microsoft, later this year, will begin public trials of Project xCloud, which will let players stream Xbox One games to computers, phones and tablets.
Video games have continued to claim a larger piece of the entertainment market in recent years. In 2017, U.S. consumers spent $36 billion on software, according to the Entertainment Software Association. That’s more than triple the number from 2007.