Tech giants Nvidia and Tencent Games have announced a new collaboration that'll bring cloud gaming to China, with Nvidia GPU technology powering Tencent's START cloud gaming service, which has already started testing this year.
START lets players try triple-A titles on a variety of devices, and Tencent intends to push the scale to millions, providing an experience that they claim is equivalent to playing locally using a gaming rig.
"As one of the leading global platforms for game development, publishing and operations, Tencent Games is set to deliver amazing cloud gaming," said Jeff Fisher, senior vice president of Gaming at Nvidia. "Combining the Tencent platform with Nvidia's GPU technology will provide a world-class experience for gamers everywhere."
"Nvidia's leadership in building the world's most powerful GPUs paired with their experience in cloud solutions will empower us to scale our START platform to millions of gamers," said Steven Ma, senior vice president at Tencent. "Today marks a new opportunity for our companies to further push the frontiers of gaming."
The press release also announces that the pair are collaborating for a joint innovation lab, exploring new applications for AI in games, as well as engine optimisations and new lighting techniques.
This streaming platform joins a growing list of those available right now, including Google's Stadia service, which released last month and has just expanded with new games. Microsoft is also moving into the space with xCloud, and both this and Google promise high-performance gaming on a number of devices.
Can START compete with others?