This year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) will include a new keynote presenter that could signal a shift in how people play games. Google has sent out invites to its GDC press event, during which it’s expected to unveil a new game streaming product. This could be the next step for the recent Project Stream test.

There have been rumors about a Google game stream product or service for several years. Initially, leaks pointed to a hardware platform called Yeti that would stream games to a connected display. In late 2018, Google rolled out a game streaming test called Project Stream. To publicize the demo, it worked with Ubisoft to give everyone free access to the new Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

That test wrapped up a few weeks ago, but I had a chance to test it early on. Project Stream worked in the Chrome browser, so it enabled gameplay on almost any computer, even a basic Chromebook. Like similar technologies from Nvidia and others, Project Stream rendered the game on a remote server and streamed the video down to the player. Google’s video compression technology meant you only needed 5Mbps (15Mbps recommended) with 40ms or less ping to play the game.

Project Stream was surprisingly solid at launch. The visual quality wasn’t quite as good as it would be on a real gaming PC rendering the game locally, but most gamers wouldn’t have noticed. Project Stream also seemed to “fail gracefully” when bandwidth became constrained. You would get a small warning in the corner, and the video would get a bit fuzzier. It was still totally playable, though.

Google wrapped up Project Stream in early 2019, offering players a free copy of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey as thanks. Of course, you’d need a real gaming PC to run that version.

Google’s GDC event will take place on March 19th at 10 AM Pacific. All we know for sure is that Google is there to talk about a gaming project. It just seems extremely likely that it will be a new phase for Project Stream. It might remain browser-only, but Google does have a giant network of TV’s out there with Chromecast streaming dongles plugged in. If it could leverage those to stream games, it could instantly have as many eyeballs as Sony or Microsoft.

Now read: