Shadow, the cloud gaming platform which does things rather differently – as it isn’t just a straightforward streaming service, but rather gives you a full gaming PC in the cloud – has announced a major relaunch which is coming next month.
The company – which was acquired by OVHcloud founder Octave Klaba back in May 2021 – revealed that a ‘Shadow Spotlight’ keynote will reveal its relaunch plans and “strategic vision for the coming years”. What’s more, it’ll “deliver on promises made to its community”, the firm wrote in a teaser press release for the event which will happen on May 18.
There’ll be a bunch of new announcements about the cloud gaming service, and plenty to get excited about, apparently. Indeed, we’re told that: “2022 will be a massive year for Shadow and we cannot wait to update our community with everything we have for them!”
The launch event kicks off at 8am Pacific Time in the US (4pm UK time) on May 18 as mentioned, on Shadow’s YouTube and Twitch channels (plus Twitter).
Analysis: What’s lurking in the shadows?
The strength of Shadow is, of course, the fact that you get what’s essentially an entire remote PC, not just a streaming service packaged for specific games or products. In other words, you can use that virtual Windows 10 PC to do whatever you want (even upgrade it to Windows 11, as we’ve seen, though Microsoft’s latest OS still isn’t officially supported on a Shadow PC installation).
Exactly what changes are coming, we can’t be sure – maybe Windows 11 support for one thing – as the info in this initial teaser is pretty thin on the ground. Although the press bumph does mention creatives and business users, so that could point to different tiers of subscription aimed at those folks, perhaps.
What’s also welcome is a mention in the press material of making the service more “accessible and affordable”, which can only be a good thing, assuming, naturally, that this isn’t just general marketing blather.
Better stability is another vague promise, too, and we can guess at some pepped-up specs to boot, as the current GPU in the Shadow PC, a GTX 1080 equivalent, doesn’t exactly feel cutting-edge for contemporary gaming (remember, Nvidia now offers an RTX 3080 tier with its GeForce Now streaming service).
Whatever the relaunch brings, we’ll find out soon enough, and we’re certainly keen to see how Shadow reshapes its cloud PC offering to better take on rival gaming services like the aforementioned GeForce Now or indeed Google Stadia.
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