Walmart’s unannounced cloud gaming service codenamed ‘Project Storm’ has been detailed in confidential emails shown during the Epic Games vs. Apple trial.
The first rumors surrounding Walmart’s cloud gaming service came from 2019, a few days after Google Stadia’s announcement. Since then, Project Storm hasn’t been mentioned that often.
The emails exchanged between Epic Games and Walmart included a presentation with some details about the Project Storm platform. A slide titled “How we are building it” shows Walmart planned to support multiple 3rd party launchers inside the cloud gaming platform, including Uplay, Origin, Steam, Battle.net, Epic Games Store, and Bethesda Launcher.
Another slide of the presentation shows a glimpse of what the Home menu would look like. The UI would include a list of ‘Recently Played’ games and another one for ‘My Games.’ Users could also choose games by genre or use the search function.
In the emails, Walmart described its platform as an “open ecosystem,” allowing users to play locally after downloading a game or through streaming from the cloud.
This email also contained a photo of Rein with other members of the Epic Games executive team and a game clip that would be used to attach a controller to the phone. This clip would be available at Walmart for $2.
The beta period of Project Storm was slated for July 2019, but the service has never undergone such a phase. Reports claim Walmart had already secured some partners, but the launch was put on hold last year when the Covid-19 pandemic started. It’s still unclear if we will ever see Project Storm reaching end customers.
