Google likely to announce gaming hardware alongside streaming service on 19 March

Earlier this week, Google made a mysterious announcement. The company is planning a keynote at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on 19 March. While nothing's been said in an official capacity yet, Google is expected to launch a new game streaming service and also announce gaming hardware at the event.Google has been working on its Project Stream service over the past six months, allowing Chrome users to stream Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and play the game simply using an optional wired PlayStation or Xbox controller. The only other prerequisite to using the service was to have a 25 Mbps internet connection.[caption id="attachment_5625011" align="alignnone" width="1280"]

The Google name is displayed outside the company's office in London, Britain. Image: Reuters[/caption]Through Project Stream, Google's motive was to show people that games can be played without the need for dedicated hardware, by simply letting Google servers do the heavy-lifting. The Project Stream demo, though, is said to be only a part of what Google's wider plan for gaming is. The wider plan codenamed Project Yeti within Google, also involves the making of a hardware device that makes it simpler to stream games to a Chromebook or PC.In order to get Project Yeti to work the way Google wants it to, the company is expected to launch hardware which would be similar to a gaming console along with controllers. Nothing's known yet about what the console will look like, but we do know that the company has been talking to big video game developers to garner their interest towards the platform.A report by 9To5Mac suggests that some sort of gamer-centric hardware is definitely on it way soon and it is highly likely that GDC is where we will see it.