Orion Is Bethesda's Entry Into The Cloud Streaming Game

The cloud gaming market is quickly filling out with competing platforms and technologies and Bethesda isn't staying on the sidelines. The publisher announced at E3 2019 that it's working with cloud streaming, and claims its technology makes streaming a lot faster--and a lot cheaper.

As announced during its E3 press conference, Bethesda's cloud streaming tech is "a game- and platform-agnostic technology that optimizes game engines for streaming" called Orion, according to Bethesda's Orion website. Instead of focusing on hardware like Google or Microsoft, Orion is a technology that's added to game engines to improve their streaming capabilities on all platforms.

Id Software chief technology officer Robert Duffy and Bethesda director of publishing James Altman said on-stage that Orion's big push is in minimizing latency, which can be an ongoing issue with streaming games over the internet. Bethesda says Orion is 20% faster per frame than streaming games without it, reducing the time it takes for the game to react to you pushing a button while you're playing. It'll also help players who have internet data caps or live far away from data centers, sucking up 40% less bandwidth than non-Orion games, according to Bethesda.

During the press conference, Bethesda showed Doom streaming on a mobile device in 4K and at 60 frames-per-second with Orion. The company also said that the reduction in bandwidth cost will mean that users will be able to play games at max settings regardless of distance from data centers or data caps.

Bethesda also announced during the press conference that players can sign up to try the technology for free through Doom's slayerclub.com website. Signing up earns members 50 Slayer Club points even if they're not chose for the public trial. "The first trial will be for iOS 11+ devices; however, your registration will be logged for future interest in participation on other platforms, including PC and Android," the website says.