Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:EA) announced the acquisition (closed this month) of GameFly's wholly owned subsidiary cloud gaming technology assets and personnel.
The team based in Caesarea, Israel, will now join EA's central technology organization responsible for developing and operating the platform that powers Electronic Arts games and services.
Ken Moss, Chief Technology Officer of Electronic Arts, said:
Cloud gaming is an exciting frontier that will help us to give even more players the ability to experience games on any device from anywhere. We’re thrilled to bring this talented team’s expertise into Electronic Arts as we continue to innovate and expand the future of games and play.
The press release notes that cloud gaming opens up the possibility to expand the reach of games via streaming to more players, devices and regions of the world.
With the acquisition of GameFly's subsidiary, Electronic Arts is thus strengthening its strategy focus on technologies that allow players to access the games however they want while enabling the delivering of next-generation experiences at scale.
It is unclear what that means for the future of GameFly. As a reminder, the company's streaming offer allows customers to play the games directly on Smart TVs like Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, LG Smart TV, Philips Smart TV, and EMTEC. At that point, they only need a game controller (such as Sony's DualShock 4 controller or Microsoft's Xbox 360/Xbox One controllers) and obviously a minimum stable bandwidth of 5 Mbps (though 10 Mbps or higher guarantees the optimal experience). Both wired and wireless connections are supported, though wired is preferable whenever possible; those who have no choice but use a wireless connection should try and use a 5 GHz router.
There are also free game trials available after you've downloaded the free application on your Smart TV, so you can check out the streaming quality with your setup.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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