Google Stadia, Magenta Gaming, xCloud and Playstation Now clearly show that more and more companies are jumping on the still young business of streaming games. EA also teased the streaming service project Atlas for the first time in November 2018, but then published no further information for almost a year. Now Ken Moss, CTO of the group, has broken the long silence in a Blogpost and has announced the start of the public test in addition to further details. Applications for the two-week test phase can currently be submitted via official page. Since there is only talk of a “test” and Moss does not address whether the project is in the alpha phase or already in the beta phase, the state of development can currently only be guessed at.
During the test phase the PC versions of Fifa 19, Titanfall 2, Need for Speed Rivals and Unravel can be played. According to EA, these titles were chosen in order to be able to uncover as many probably still existing problems as possible by a mixture of the genre. In addition, the test should create experiences to the topic Crossplay. As Moss explains, “players can also save their progress on one device and then recall it on another”.
The Frostbite engine developed by EA, which was the focus of the first presentation, is not addressed by Moss. So it’s likely that Project Atlas’ focus has changed in the last ten months.
