The rumoured online subscription game streaming service from Google, codenamed ‘Yeti’, which surfaced earlier this year is getting a little more traction with a report stating that Google is actively pursuing game developers to either purchase them, or have them develop for the service.
The idea behind ‘Yeti’ is that games would be streamed to a lower end piece of hardware from distributed servers around the world which would do the heavy graphic lifting required for high-end gaming before being presented to the user on either a dongle like a Chromecast, a Google produced ‘box’ that would run the service, or even to a Chrome browser tab.
According to a report from Kotaku which has surfaced this morning, Google has been actively talking with game developers both at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco earlier this year, as well as at the more recent E3 Gaming Expo in Los Angeles. The talks, according to at least five people who ‘have either been briefed on Google’s plans or heard about them secondhand’ who spoke to Kotaku, Google is interested in both gauging interest in the streaming platform from those developers – as well as outright purchasing them.
There’s also talk of integrating a somewhat fanciful integration with YouTube as well to help you get through some of the trickier parts of tougher games. According to Kotaku, this is how it would work:
Imagine you’re playing a game and you run into a tricky boss or don’t know how to solve a puzzle. Instead of opening up your laptop or checking your phone for a guide, you could press a button to activate an overlay on your screen that cues up a YouTube walkthrough of the game you’re playing.
Kotaku points out that Google hired ex-PlayStation and Xbox manager Phil Harrison earlier this year. According to his Wikipedia page, Mr Harrison has also spent time on the advisory board for cloud gaming Gaikai which morphed into their remote gaming services PlayStation Now and Remote Play.
Google has a history of skirting close to launches and then pulling back, so whether they’re really serious about jumping into launching a cloud gaming service is the big question. There’s no time-frame for when Google would launch the service, but their October ‘Made by Google’ event would be a perfect place to launch it, though if they want to do it right we may have to wait until next year to see it after they’ve lined up more content creators.
Do you see yourself signing up for a Google backed cloud gaming service?
