As video game streaming services have been the talk of the town, an unexpected company appears to want a piece of that pie. In a report from USgamer, the massive retailer Walmart is looking to create their own video game streaming service. According to the report, numerous “anonymous” sources that are knowledgeable with the company’s plans confirmed the company’s intentions, and that the company ” has been speaking with developers and publishers since earlier this year and throughout this year’s Game Developers Conference.”
It is currently unknown how long the massive retailer has been working on their game streaming service as the company has been very secretive in talks with developers. It also appears that the company has no release date in mind for the service as of yet.
While Walmart’s entry into the field seems out of left field, USgamer cites that the company “has been increasingly looking into more tech-focused markets” to compete with the likes of Amazon in this day and age. The company also reportedly ” has a data center unofficially called Area 71 in Caverna, Missouri.” This data center apparently “holds over 460 trillion bytes of data” which would be very important for a video game streaming service’s success.
Video game streaming services have been lauded as the future of the games industry. Earlier this week, Google announced their streaming service Stadia which is planned to launch later this year. Last year, Microsoft announced plans for their own streaming service with Project xCloud. Elsewhere, Amazon is reportedly in the process of creating their own streaming service as well. PlayStation already has PlayStation Now, and it’ll be interesting to see how hard they push it going forward. Nintendo already has streaming versions of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey running in Japan as well. It appears that the video game streaming service market will be highly competitive.