EA is exploring cloud gaming with the launch of the platform Project Atlas. EA CTO Ken Moss has emphasised that the platform integrates both game engine and services and 1000 of EA employees are taking care of it.
Earlier this year EA acquired the cloud gaming technology assets and personnel of a wholly owned subsidiary of GameFly and it is quite obvious that the strategic acquisition of the technology and team members of Gamefly has deepened EA’s capabilities and expertise in cloud gaming, which has helped them to roll out its own cloud gaming platform, Project Atlas . The platform will help explore new ways for players to access and experience games from any device.
As per EA’s official blog post, there are two major components to building a game from a technology standpoint
> The game engine — this is what controls the fundamentals of the game with things like rendering, game logic, physics, animation, audio, and a toolchain for creating the game.
> And a rich set of services like secure player identity and authentication, player matchmaking and achievements, and social communications with friends that truly bring the game to life — all supported by common data management and game and service hosting.
“When we talk about cloud gaming, we’re referring to a game that resides on an EA server rather than on the gamer’s PC or mobile device. The gamer enters the game by installing a thin client that can access EA’s servers where the games are running,” said Moss.
Beyond that, EA is investing in cloud gaming to enable deeper personalisation, and aim to create a world full of user-generated content blurring the lines between the discrete domains of game engines and game services.
Not only that, EA is expecting that they can progress gaming with artificial intelligence (AI) technology which the industry is yet to harness completely. When AI is available everywhere, developers will use it to optimise almost every element of a game from the distribution of resources in an online shooter to populating and evolving expansive virtual worlds with minimal manual intervention and to unlocking deep personalisation of in-game agents at scale.