This week during the Tokyo Game Show, Square Enix revealed Shinra Technologies, a cloud gaming company that aims to change the game industry ecosystem. Yoichi Wada, who served as Chief Executive Officer and President of Square Enix from 2000 to 2013, is now the president of this new company.
Shinra's press release on Friday said that its business is based on "unique" patented technologies. The company has also established an "optimized datacenter environment" to stream cloud-based games at the highest quality possible. Shinra plans to work closely with game developers to create experiences unlike what you'd find on the Xbox One or PlayStation 4.
"Shinra uses its original architecture to offer games with the power of a 'virtual supercomputer,' thus enabling radically new experiences not possible on PCs or game consoles," the press release said. "All games are streamed as video, and Shinra requires no particular hardware to play its games. Furthermore, Shinra has partnered with world-class infrastructure and network providers to ensure high video quality and minimal latency."
The company is headquartered in New York City and has offices located in Montreal and Tokyo. Shinra is already in talks with Ubisoft and has landed a deal with Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios. Shinra Technologies, which gets its name from the infamous organization in Final Fantasy 7, plans to launch beta tests in the United States and in Japan in Q1 2015.
According to Polygon, the Japanese technical beta will include the Agni's Philosophy technology demo, Kengo Nakajima's Space Sweeper, and four Square Enix games including Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Final Fantasy 7, Hitman Absolution and Tomb Raider. There's no word on what the U.S.-based demo will provide.
"We needed a technical breakthrough to make this happen," said Jacob Navok, senior vice president at Shinra Technologies. "If we simply bring traditional games to the cloud, you will never get a game experience that surpasses current games. We want developers to create entirely new games with revolutionary game experiences."
Wada indicated to the press on Friday that he expects to see cloud gaming really take off in 2016.
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