Intel Shelves Project Endgame, a Cloud-Based ‘Continual Compute’ Service

Intel is putting Project Endgame on hold, in a sign that development of the mysterious cloud gaming service may be over.

The company mentioned the pause on Twitter when a user asked for a status update. In response, the official Intel graphics account tweeted(Opens in a new window): “Our Project Endgame efforts are on hold. We don’t have any updates to share at this time.”

An Intel spokesperson told PCMag the same. Project Endgame was supposed to be available sometime last year, but the chip maker has been mum on the cloud service’s fate. 

Initially, we though Project Endgame might be similar to Nvidia’s GeForce Now, enabling users to stream games to their laptops or smartphones from a data center outfitted with Intel Arc GPUs. But in May 2022, Intel’s former graphics chief, Raja Koduri, demoed the project, showing it could allow a laptop to pull additional GPU resources from surrounding computers or from the cloud to run all kinds of software.  

Specifically, in the demo(Opens in a new window), Koduri turns on an app called “Continual Compute.” His laptop is then able to run an Unreal Engine 5-powered game, The Matrix Awakens, by leveraging GPUs from other sources. The result makes the game run smoothly, without any frame-rate stuttering.   

How Intel intended on making Project Endgame a reality was left unsaid. But at the time, Koduri said the service could power VR metaverse-style software across any hardware. The only problem is that Koduri has since left Intel to focus on a new startup.

The market has also shifted away from the metaverse to generative AI. Hence, Intel may have decided to cut the project when the company is already facing financial struggles, which have led to employee layoffs.