Winterfrost
Shadow-of-Sundered-Star
Square Enix announces a Technological Breakthrough in Cloud Gaming Called “Project FLARE”
"Square Enix Holdings Co. Ltd. (“Square Enix”) announced that it will create new game experiences through “Project FLARE,” a technological breakthrough in cloud game architecture. Square Enix is collaborating with companies such as Ubisoft on this project and is seeking to team up with other cutting-edge developers and partners to further the advances made possible by “Project FLARE.”
Square Enix believes that cloud will revolutionize the way users will interact with content, and the way that content is delivered to users. Square Enix further envisions that a need for content that matches with these new methods of interaction and distribution will increase considerably. To support this vision, Square Enix is providing the technological basis by which developers and distribution partners can seize the opportunity to provide games at their full potential with the cloud.
New experiences to be offered with “Project FLARE” include Hollywood-quality animation running in real time to deepen the player’s immersion, uncapping AI and physics processing to realize the extremes of realism and fantasy, and video streams allowing even existing games to be enjoyed in new ways.
These new, supercomputer-like game experiences are possible with “Project FLARE” by a unique, patented architecture enabling cost-efficient scalability of processing power, through which images are streamed as video.
Square Enix has recently conducted live demonstrations of “Project FLARE” technology; videos will be made publically available at the “Project FLARE” website.
These new experiences will be enjoyable to their full extent in fiber and other broadband environments, to ensure high quality and low latency.
Square Enix has engaged Ubisoft as an early partner on “Project FLARE”; Ubisoft’s “Arcus” technology and team at its Quebec studio are developing new means of streaming “Project FLARE” games directly to players, in addition to applications that connects the players’ gaming platforms to infrastructure running “Project FLARE.”
“Ubisoft and Square Enix share a similar vision for how cloud gaming will drive our industry forward,” said Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot. “The technical advances made by Square Enix and Ubisoft’s growing expertise in cloud computing infrastructure will eventually help us deliver gaming experiences that are more accessible and immersive than anything available today.”
“We are convinced that our “Project FLARE” will open the door for a new era in gaming,” said Square Enix Co. Ltd. Chairman Yoichi Wada. “In the game industry, revolutions in both technology and business models have evolved content, and growth has come from the new game experiences born of that content. In recent years, growth has been driven entirely by the business models such as F2P. Finally, the technological breakthrough has arrived.”
Partners and developers inspired by the vision, technology and service plans should contact Square Enix to learn more about working together at http://www.jp.square-enix.com/flare/"
http://www.jp.square-enix.com/flare/
http://www.jp.square-enix.com/flare/pdf/Project_Flare_20131104.pdf
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/11/05/project-flare-square-enixs-cloud-gaming-service-revealed
IGN's Thoughts on it.
"While it won’t confirm specifics yet -- the initiative will enter beta testing within the next two years, will roll out in North America and Japan, and will be “enjoyable to [its] full extent in fiber and other broadband environments to ensure high quality and low latency -- Square Enix seems interested in rolling out Project FLARE as an application on home devices.
Square Enix showed me numerous early demos that do not represent what’s necessarily happening, but establishes the idea of what’s possible with FLARE. A Deus Ex: Human Revolution demo showcased dozens of generic crates tumbling as missiles toppled them over – something you may have seen in early demos for CryEngine. While hardly Earth-shattering, offloading that calculation to the cloud allows developers to better realize their worlds with other processors on the cloud. Another let me manipulate a camera to observe the detail of an Angni’s Philosophy character render or scenery frame – something Square Enix would only describe as “deepened immersion.” I wasn’t sure where it was going with this, but it’s interesting that Square hopes to have elaborate in-game sequences with gorgeous character models, realistic physics, and the sort of immaculate detail seen in the Agni’s Philosophy demo running at 4K or 8K resolution without the frame rate taking a nose dive.
The most impressive representation of FLARE’s possibility showed Final Fantasy XI players loading up their friend’s games in a real-time window, allowing them to see what others are doing in real time, and potentially join their instance. Streaming multiple games and instances in one window is hardly new, but engaging with it in real time via the same window could be interesting."
Read more about it here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=709445
...since I literally copied and pasted everything.
EDIT: It seems as if Quotes aren't exactly working, I'll get rid of those.
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