In a press release shared earlier today, the company announced a new program called Project Endgame that will give users an "always-accessible, low latency" computing experience, powered by its own Arc GPUs. Details on the program are very minimal, but it seems Intel is trying its hand at a new streaming service similar to Nvidia's GeForce Now cloud gaming service.
The biggest question is what the target audience will Project Endgame is. On the surface, Endgame appears to be a game-streaming solution, but Intel's wording could also mean it's a cloud streaming service designed for professional users needing a Windows-based workstation on the cloud.
If Intel goes the gaming route, then we are looking at a future competitor to platforms such as GeForce Now and Google Stadia (or what's left of it), where gamers can stream games to almost any device that has an internet connection.
Intel will have to choose how the platform is oriented, whether it'll go the GeForce route and stream PC games from customers' own personal libraries, or go the Stadia route and build a completely new platform with games and peripherals custom-tuned to the service. Hopefully, it's not the latter, since that means you'll probably have to buy games that only run on Intel's streaming service.
But, Intel could also and make Endgame a workstation-oriented service. Giving customers a complete Windows desktop experience with a discrete Arc GPU streamed directly to their local devices. This would be optimal for users who need to do GPU-intensive tasks from a machine on the cloud.
Intel could even expand upon this idea by optimizing the service for gaming as well. Since this theoretical service would have a high-end Intel GPU paired to a Windows operating system, there's no reason it wouldn't be capable of gaming.
We don't know what GPUs Intel will be using for its Endgame project, but we guess it'll be one of Intel's Xe datacenter GPUs, probably Arctic Sound-M. Even if Endgame is designed only for gaming, there's little chance Intel will use a desktop gaming GPU in its servers. Since desktop cards aren't designed for server environments. Even Nvidia uses data center GPUs exclusively in its GeForce Now service.
We will know more soon enough, Intel says Project Endgame will be available for use later this year.
