Resident Evil, Assassin's Creed Streaming Company Raises $45 Million From Tencent, Sony, And Others

Ubitus, the cloud gaming company whose technology powers the streaming versions of Resident Evil, Assassin's Creed, and Hitman games on Switch, has received a major injection of cash from some big-name companies. The Japanese company has secured more funding led by Tencent and Square Enix, as well as Sony's Innovation Fund, and Actoz.

Ubitus did not disclose the specific dollar amount of funding, but Bloomberg said it was $45 million, which boosts the company's total valuation above $400 million.

"We are very excited to have some of the most important players in the game industry as our strategic shareholders. Their investments represent a vote of confidence in our technology, our achievements, and our potential role in the rapidly growing cloud game market," Ubitus CEO Wesley Kuo said in a statement. "With our innovative technology and their resources, we shall help more partners roll out cloud game contents and services, and accelerate the industry’s transformation to the cloud."

Ubitus offers cloud gaming solutions that allow higher-end games to play on lower-spec machines. Ubitus says there is a huge amount of appeal for this as it raises the addressable user base for a game to a wider group of people. More than 80 game companies and platform-holders have tested the company's technology so far.

Ubitus also believes its cloud technology has the opportunity to make an impact on the fashion and entertainment industries, thanks in part to a push toward virtual events due to the pandemic.

Bloomberg Intelligence's Matthew Kanterman told Bloomberg that he sees long-term potential for cloud gaming to help "ease the development burden of making games for multiple platforms." Cloud gaming could also help gaming reach into new markets and drive an uptick in subscription revenue. However, Kanterman doesn't see cloud gaming taking over completely anytime soon.

"It remains a ways off from being a main platform," he said.

Cloud gaming is already commonplace in gaming, as Sony has offered PlayStation Now for years already with a library of hundreds of titles, while Microsoft more recently rolled out xCloud with a huge library of games through Game Pass.

Ubitus' technology was used to power the cloud versions of Resident Evil and Assassin's Creed games on Nintendo Switch. It's also used for the Dragon Quest X online game. More recently, Ubitus' cloud infrastructure was used to power the Nintendo Switch version of Hitman 3.