Google is reportedly working on a PlayStation Now/GeForce Now Game Streaming Competitor

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Google is quite the ambitious company and loves to experiment with different products and services. This has happened in multiple ways with the company being at the forefront of the market or taking inspirations from others so they can add their own splash of Google. Either way, this process has proven to be quite successful for the Mountain View-based technology giant. Today, we’re seeing a report that claims Google is working on a subscription-based game streaming service akin to PlayStation Now/Nvidia GeForce Now that would utilize a Chromecast or console hardware made in-house.

According to the report from The Information, the subscription-based game streaming service is being referred to internally as Yeti. The idea of a video game streaming service has been something that has been attempted for years. Earlier attempts have failed due to the high costs or poor performance caused by high latency issues. However, two services that have endured is GeForce Now from NVIDIA and PlayStation Now from Sony.

Recent research showed that the video game market raked in just over $108 billion throughout 2017. When this gets broken down, $59.2 billion was brought in by the mobile sector, $33 billion from the PC sector and lastly $8.3 by the console sector. Comparing this to other entertainment industries, the global box office revenue hit $40 billion last year which was a record for them (even though overall attendance was down). Thus, it makes sense that Google wants in on a business that has eclipsed the box office movie industry.

The report claims that the idea of Google’s Yeti service is for people to pay a monthly subscription fee to access a collection of games. These games are being run on remote devices in the company’s data centers and are streamed to the user over the Internet. The project is said to be led by two Google hardware executives (Mario Queiroz, the VP of product management, and Majd Bakar, the VP of engineering).

The report says the project has been in the works for 2 years and had an original launch date during the 2017 holiday season. The mysterious hire of Phil Harrison (someone who has worked in Sony’s Playstation division as well as Microsoft’s Xbox division) is now starting to make sense and this could be a sign of a potential announcement at Google I/O 2018.