Comcast May Be Looking to Stream Games to Your Cable Box, And Partnering with EA to Do It
Cable company Comcast may be looking to stream games to its customers soon, if recent reports from Reuters are to be believed. The television giant, as part of this potential new program, may even be partnering with video game publishing giant Electronic Arts to stream games right to your cable box.
This all comes from a Reuters report that claims that Comcast and EA are nearing a deal to stream games in an on-demand fashion, much like what has been done with on-demand movie rentals. Even more impressive is that the technology behind this new service has reportedly been in secret testing for two years. A report on Re/code also confirms that Comcast and EA are nearing an agreement.
In terms of specifics, the report indicates that this new service might be limited to Comcast customers who use the company’s premium X1 cable box user interface, which offers apps and on-demand services very accessibly. The service, from the outset at least, would start with casual and family games, with the potential to add action and first-person shooter games down the line. No official title list has been settled on just yet.
The games will control with tablets owned by the user, not a traditional controller.
While it’s hard to imagine that this service will, at least any time soon, compete with the likes of giants like Microsoft (Xbox One), Sony (PlayStation 4), and Nintendo (Wii U), or even Android-powered boxes like Amazon’s Fire TV, it’s definitely taking another step towards what could be the future standard for video game delivery.
Services like OnLive and Gaikai have demonstrated in the past that streaming games is a potentially viable standard, so long as global Internet (particularly in North America) improves substantially. However, the commercial success of these products varied, as OnLive is virtually no longer an entity, and Gaikai is now powering Sony’s forthcoming PlayStation Now service (which streams PS3 games to your current Sony consoles and devices).
Where Comcast takes this likely service is unknown, but we’ll simply have to wait and see.