All jokes aside, Square Enix has announced “Project Flare,” a new cloud-based piece of tech that the company is describing as a breakthrough in cloud gaming.

Square is making a bid for cloud based streaming of games with this platform, alledging that the games themselves will be supported by virtual supercomputers. Coming from this, they’re saying this will completely change how content is delivered to users, enabling new experiences. Maybe they’re developing virtual reality interfaces as well?

A comparison was made between Project Flare and its competitors, Gaikai and OnLive, claiming that the latter two are limited to their interfacing with a physical data center, while Project Flare is entirely cloud based, hence the term virtual supercomputer. They elaborated by describing typical game streaming as having linear scalability, which is affected by both game latency and network latency, while Project Flare has exponential scalability, which is only limited by the latency of your network.

Here’s an official list of features to expect with Project Flare:

• Deepened immersion (Real-time Hollywood-Quality Animation and Physics).
• New game designs and features (Video Streams).
• Richer, more lifelike worlds (Big Data Rendering).
• The extremes of realism and fantasy(Mass Battles, Crowds, AI).

The press release also promised four demos showcasing Project Flare this month:

• “Project FLARE GPU server Density Demonstration”
• “Final Fantasy XI on Project FLARE – Concept Video”
• “Agni’s Philosophy on Project FLARE”
• “Deus Ex: Human Revolution on Project FLARE – Enhanced Physics R&D”

If you want to check out the full press release, you can view it here. So, is the future in cloud computing? Square Enix surely seems to think so!