Why did Google recently hire Jade Raymond (opens in new tab) as a vice president? We might find out this week. Today at 10 am Pacific (find your timezone here (opens in new tab)), Google is hosting a GDC keynote where it's announcing its vision for 'the future of gaming.' You can watch it live in the player above.
We know the tech giant has been working on a game streaming platform, so the speculation is that it's going to reveal a console-like box that does just that—though presumably it'd work on our PCs, too, or anything that runs Chrome. That said, we don't really know the extent of what Google has been up to, or if there's anything more to it than cloud streaming.
While rendering games remotely and streaming them to PCs and other devices does work—Nvidia is experimenting with it right now, as well as most other big tech companies—no one's been able to pull off a system that, with current broadband infrastructure, maintains consistent quality as well as running games locally (at least if you have good hardware). If that's the big announcement, Google will still have some convincing to do.
After the keynote, Google has some high-profile guests lined up for its Developer Day sessions taking place in the afternoon. Crystal Dynamics, Amy Hennig, and Raph Koster will be there (opens in new tab), as well as Ubisoft (opens in new tab) and id Software (opens in new tab). The Ubisoft connection is easy to understand, as Assassin's Creed Odyssey was used in a test of Google's streaming platform.
If you can't watch the keynote, we'll be covering all the GDC news from Google and others throughout the week, so check the front page or our news section to see what you missed.
