You might remember that Electronic Arts briefly talked about Project Atlas almost a year ago, discussing its concept for cloud gaming. Today, EA Chief Technology Officer Ken Moss announced that a technical trial for cloud gaming is on its way and interested users can register for it via the Community Playtesting portal.
Moss also revealed there'll be four games in the trial (FIFA 19, Titanfall 2, Need for Speed Rivals, and Unravel). Additionally, cross-play and cross-progression with Origin PC will be part of the test.
As our games will continue to be the creative heart of EA, we are focused on testing and understanding their performance in cloud gaming. So our goal with this exclusive trial is to gather more inputs at scale to test performance and quality of service in a variety of network conditions and on multiple server routing scenarios. While this particular trial will be focused on cloud gaming on PC, we are also working to understand performance across multiple other devices. Most importantly, we are here to learn how to improve and enhance the cloud gaming experience for our players.
What exactly are we testing?
First, we want to ensure that there is strong quality of service in cloud gaming by being able to adjust to real-world, often less than ideal, conditions such as unstable bandwidth and network strength. Over the last decade, latency and jitter have made cloud gaming a non-starter for any serious gamer. But now that the global cloud infrastructure is finally reaching ubiquity, EA is working on leveraging AWS and the public cloud so that we can deploy as close to the players as possible, even in the face of unstable networks and changes in bandwidth. This player test will help us to better understand how our games perform across real-life scenarios.
We’re also testing a wide breadth of games and genres to be able to better understand how the streaming technology performs across each. From the visual fidelity for games that are known for stunning graphics and demanding rendering, to the uncompromised precision and accuracy which are so critical to multiplayer FPS games — all of this must perform seamlessly. As part of the external trial, players will get hands-on with four HD games, including FIFA 19, Titanfall 2, Need for Speed Rivals, and Unravel.
As part of the trial, we’re testing the technical functionality of cross play that will allow players to play the games they love with others no matter where, or on what device, they have chosen to play — a major step toward cloud gaming finally uniting platforms in play. It will also allow for players to be able to save their progression on one platform and have that reflect in another. In fact during this trial, players in the cloud gaming trial can engage with the live PC environment on Origin. Players will also be able to test out their cross progression when they log in to PC after the conclusion of the trial. This is a very tangible connection between what is possible now and the future we aim to create.
With Google Stadia coming in November and Microsoft's Project xCloud due for public trials later this year, cloud gaming will certainly be a huge topic in these last few months of 2019. Stay tuned on Wccftech for all the latest coverage.
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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