History of video games/Platforms/Shinra Technologies

Development
In November of 2013 Square Enix announced Project Flare, an initiative to develop cloud centric gaming infrastructure. Project Flare would later spin off into Shinra Technologies as a subsidiary of Square Enix in September of 2014. The company was based in New York City with satellite offices in Tokyo and Montreal. In 2014 the company had ambitious technology development goals, with 2016 being seen as a key year for cloud gaming growth.

The namesake of Shinra Technologies was the fictional Shinra Corporation in the game Final Fantasy VII, which was opposed by a fictional group called Avalanche. In real life Shinra Technologies and Avalanche studios worked closely together on the Shinra Technologies platform.

Japan
Japanese beta testing of the service began recruitment of subscribers of NTT East fiber internet service from January 26th, 2015 to February 10th, 2015. The beta test began just two days later on February 17th, 2015 with a projected end date of May 16th, 2015.

United States of America
At SXSW at Austin Texas in March of 2015 The Living World was shown at the Google Fiber Space as a demo. American Beta testing of the service began in Kansas City on August 11th, 2015, with only gigabit speed Google Fiber subscribers being eligible to test the service.

Legacy
In January 2016 it was announced that Square Enix would close Shinra Technologies, costing them 2.2 billion Japanese yen. Some saw Shinra's strife as a sign that cloud game streaming would never work.

A number of former Shinra Technologies employees would form the livestreaming technology company Genvid shortly after Shinra folded, also based in New York. Work on Genvid started as early as February 2016, with the establishment of a Twitter account, and was formally established by March 2016. In December of 2020 Genvid debuted Rival Peak, among the first Massive Interactive Live Events accessible to the public, finally realizing a product category somewhat similar to one Shinra Technologies was unable to fully launch before closure.

Hardware
A demo instance of the technology shown at E3 2015 was powered by two computers. The compute computer uses an Intel Xeon CPU and Nvidia GTX Titan Black GPU. The render computer uses an Intel Xeon CPU and four Nvidia GTX 980 graphics cards.

During the Japanese beta test the company Techorus handled server hosting.

Software
Much of Shinra Technologies product was focused on making easier and better netcode for developers.

Software for Shinra instances could use the DirectX graphics API.

Games

 * Space Sweeper - Cooperative MMO 2D twin stick shooter with crafting mechanics and massive numbers of enemies, designed to render the entire game world for all players simultaneously. Indie title by Kengo Nakajima. Exclusive game for Shinra Technologies streaming.
 * The Living World - Tech Demo rendering 16,000 dragons at once. Exclusive for Shinra Technologies streaming.
 * Agni's Philosophy - Tech Demo and port.
 * Tomb Raider - Port of the 2013 game.
 * Hitman: Absolution- Port
 * Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Port
 * Final Fantasy VII - Port

Read more

 * Japanese beta test sign up page (Archived)