Walmart game streaming service, Project Storm, outed by Epic trial

Documents from the ongoing Epic vs Apple trial confirm Walmart's plans to make a cloud-powered game streaming service.

3

Walmart plans to follow Amazon into the game streaming market. Walmart's own game streaming service, codenamed Project Storm, was outlined in a recent exhibit in the Epic vs Apple antitrust court case. The document is publicly available on a district court data repository.

Walmart's plan is ambitious. The pitch says Project Storm would allow gamers to stream or download titles directly to their platform of choice. The company wants to stream games to any device, and the presentation shows GTA V beaming directly to TVs, PC,s tablets, phones, and even Apple Watches.

In 2019, Walmart was courting developers and publishers to fill out Project Storm's catalog. Walmart put together a presentation to sell the idea to game giants. Epic was approached, and the deck was published in the court exhibits as part of correspondence between Epic workers.

3

According to Epic co-founder Mark Rein, Walmart's Project Storm would be a low-cost service that allowed gamers to instantly switch between devices and continue playing, not unlike Project xCloud.

"I played Walmart's demo on an Android phone (with an Xbox controller) and the experience felt like playing on a PS4 and superior to playing on Android or IOS," Rein said.

Rein also said Walmart would sell its controller clip for as low as $2, and that "it was more comfortable than playing on a Nintendo Switch."

Walmart also had plans to keep specific games like Fortnite running on the Project Storm app to reduce loading times.

Project Storm is powered by LiquidSky's edge cloud technology. The service was set to launch in beta in 2019 but was delayed for unknown reasons, and the coronavirus pandemic has stalled plans. The emails say the company was "planning to aggressively develop and roll this out."

3