Google expected to announce 'Yeti' game streaming console at GDC 2019

DPennington

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Highly anticipated: Google has been rumored to be working on a gaming console since testing their streaming service in 2018. The search giant is expected to formally announce the console during their keynote at the Game Developers Conference on March 19th. Not much is known about the console's specifications, but it will likely be a streaming device with a controller designed by Google.

Google announced that it will present a keynote at this year's GDC on March 19th in San Francisco. The announcement was paired with a cryptic gif of a long hallway with a light at the end, followed by the text "gather around." There have been rumors for over a year that Google has been working on a streaming console to rival the PS4 and Xbox One.

In July 2018, Google hired former PlayStation executive Richard Marks and veteran Microsoft game developer Phil Harrison to lead their gaming division and oversee development. It's expected that the tech giant will announce the console at GDC.

Up until now, all that has been known about Google's console, known by the codename "Project Yeti", is that it will be a streaming service instead of a standalone console. Last October, Google opened its Project Stream service to the public, allowing those with a strong internet connection to test out the tech. Project Stream allowed users to play Assassin's Creed Odyssey in the Chrome browser without installing any third-party clients.

After testing the service for three months, Google shut it down in mid-January. This beta test demonstrated Google's impressive streaming technology, and served as a precursor to the console they'll be announcing next month.

Not much is known about what the Project Yeti console will look like or what hardware it may contain. It was originally reported that the Yeti hardware was similar to a Chromecast dongle with the ability to sync to different types of controllers. Now it seems as though the hardware will be a physical console and a controller designed by Google's hardware team.

Google has invited several gaming outlets and studios to their keynote, and reportedly major game developers have already started working on ways to port titles over to the streaming service. The keynote is scheduled for 10AM PST on March 19th.

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I used Project Stream for over a month to play AC:Odyssey 35+ hours. If you're close enough to the servers and have a good ISP it was pretty amazing to play a AAA game with very little hardware requirements.

It's kind of disappointing to me that they're going customer hardware and controller since I was able to play through a chrome browser on a natively supported controller in Win 10 - the Xbox One controller.

I'd gladly pay for the service, depending on titles and price, if there wasn't this initial cost to get into the service. I feel like it will be too big a barrier to entry for most if that's the only option for the service.

ETA: Now that I am playing the copy that was provided on from participating I do prefer the local performance. I owned mid-range hardware; if I was starting from scratch the Google Service is very serviceable in the browser.
 
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I used Project Stream for over a month to play AC:Odyssey 35+ hours. If you're close enough to the servers and have a good ISP it was pretty amazing to play a AAA game with very little hardware requirements.

It's kind of disappointing to me that they're going customer hardware and controller since I was able to play through a chrome browser on a natively supported controller in Win 10 - the Xbox One controller.

I'd gladly pay for the service, depending on titles and price, if there wasn't this initial cost to get into the service. I feel like it will be too big a barrier to entry for most if that's the only option for the service.

ETA: Now that I am playing the copy that was provided on from participating I do prefer the local performance. I owned mid-range hardware; if I was starting from scratch the Google Service is very serviceable in the browser.

I think it will just be whether Google can make it REALLLLY easy to use, something like Chromecast.
It would also be cool to have a membership or pay by title options.
If they can make this compatible with a chromebook... that'll be awesome too.
 
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