A pop-up Google exhibit that appeared outside the Game Developers Conference Monday morning is teasing what is likely some sort of gaming hardware that’s “coming soon” along with its new logo.
A Google employee confirmed to Variety that the logo — seen in the image above — is for the new tech set to be announced during the keynote.
Google’s unveiling of its take on the future of gaming will kick-off the second day of the annual Game Developers Conference and will include hands-on time with some of the tech unveiled at the event, Variety has also learned.
While there’s no word on what that hardware will be, the news does serve as greater confirmation of what many suspect: That Google is preparing to enter the market of PC gaming and video game consoles through its own bit of hardware, most likely paired with streaming technology.
In the weeks leading up to tomorrow’s big event, Google has been teasing the “future of gaming” with tweets and short videos. It also has been quietly building up its staff. Most notably, last week former EA and Ubisoft studio lead and game developer Jade Raymond announced she is now a vice president at the company, though didn’t specify specifically what her role would be there. It’s likely we’ll learn more about that Tuesday as well.
The company has already been testing its own cloud gaming service — called Project Stream — which allowed users to play “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey” without needing to install it on their PC. The company as has a patent for a game controller that includes voice support for Google Assistant. Last week, Variety discovered snippets of code already running in Google’s Chromecast that references a gaming service.
Chromecast being used as one way to deliver game streaming to televisions is one of the many rumors currently circulating around Google’s Tuesday event.
Google’s event will take place in one of the three buildings taken over by the Game Developers Conference, and there’s another outdoor exhibit set up between the buildings by Google. The exhibit is a sort of small video game museum featuring a timeline of major moments in video games including displays of Pong, GameBoy, the PlayStation, Dreamcast, an Atari 2600 and a display case empty except for a card that reads “Coming Soon.” One backdrop reads “Together we’ll build a playground for our imagination.” The other reads “Anything you dream can be built.” In between the two is a massive arch with the Google icon at the top and a sort of flattened out “S” suspended inside. A Google employee confirmed that was the new logo for what was set to be announced this week, but declined to say if it was an “S.”
One that that is clear, though, that this marks a major push by Google at an event that has the attention of game developers from around the world, and that this could be one of the show’s biggest bits of news this year.