Nvidia’s GRID system has been around for a while now. Back in May 2012 the company announced a partnership with Gaikai, in which the cloud gaming company would use Nvidia’s server structure to provide consumers with streaming access to games. That partnership, presumably, is still in effect (I can’t find any news of it dissolving, at least); but now Nvidia has hooked up six more prospective cloud gaming enterprises to its GRID.
According to the press release, the new partners on the GRID platform will be: “Agawi (United States); Cloud Union (China); Cyber Cloud Technologies (China); G-cluster Global (Japan); Playcast Media Systems (Israel); and Ubitus (Taiwan).”
All this means is that Nvidia will be providing the server hardware (which they market as being super low-latency, stocked with graphics cards specialised for streaming and all the other jargonified technowaffle that means “good for streaming games through”) to those companies. The cloud companies themselves will be the ones responsible for trying to make a cloud gaming/media business actually work.
“By using the NVIDIA GRID Platform, our partners will allow gamers to play anywhere, anytime, without being tethered to a box,” says Nvidia’s head of clouds, Phil Eisler.
