NetEase joins Tencent on track to bring cloud gaming to China. The company started an open beta test of its streaming platform called NetEase Cloud Games.
The service launched in November.
According to TechNode, NetEase’s cloud solution offers a standard service: streaming gaming for Android, iOS and PC games. Although, at this stage, the service only supports mobile gaming.
There are 38 titles on the platform. 20 of them are published by NetEase itself. There are also titles from its competing publisher, Tencent: these include Honor of Kings and Fate / Grand Order.
Customers can play using any mobile browser. Android users are a bit more fortunate: they can take advantage of a special app.
The biggest inconvenience identified so far is that Cloud Games makes players wait in long lines before they can enter a game. According to NetEase, this is exactly the kind of problem that an open beta test should help detect.
As of late, the Chinese giants have been increasingly paying attention to the streaming industry. Tencent is developing two cloud services at once: Tencent Instant Play (according to Game Look, the company repeatedly demoed it at industry conferences in March) and Start. Moreover, the giant cooperates with companies like Intel and Unity for cloud gaming.