Unity to acquire remote desktop app Parsec for $320 million
Parsec has grown in popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic, enough so that it became ripe for acquisition.
If you produce new technology that helps make work or life easier, there’s a good chance that you would be in line for a substantial windfall, either through sales or acquisition. For the makers of Parsec, a remote desktop app made popular by gamers, the windfall will come in the form of acquisition. Earlier today, Unity, producers of the popular Unity Engine, announced plans to acquire Parsec in a deal worth $320 million.
Parsec first debuted back in 2016 and offered a simpler way for gamers to play games together, even if the game did not have explicit online multiplayer support. Parsec would allow a third-party client to connect to the host machine running the game, then encode a video recording of the on-screen action and stream it to the third-party client. It offers support for multiple types of input devices and when network conditions are optimal, provides low-latency interaction for non-native clients.
Unsurprisingly, the features that endeared Parsec to gamers also made it an attractive option for work collaboration, particularly for digital artists and 3D modelers. When the COVID-19 pandemic forced people into remote office work, the value offered by Parsec grew exponentially.
“We believe that, more and more, creators will need to be able to work anywhere,” Unity Senior Vice President Marc Whitten explained to TechCrunch. “They’re going to work in groups that are dispersed by distance, or they’re going to be in a hybrid environment where they might be working in the office sometimes and at home sometimes. I think that’s going to mean that those creators are going to need to have access to the power they need on the glass that they have, wherever they are.” he adds. “And Parsec is a great example of a company that has just deeply innovated in that space.”
Parsec will add another feather into Unity cap and it only cost them $320 million in cash to make it happen. Whitten told TechCrunch that he doesn’t foresee any changes for existing Parsec users, but couldn’t comment yet on any potential changes to subscriptions/pricing.
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replyChris Jarrard posted a new article, Unity to acquire remote desktop app Parsec for $320 million
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Unity to acquire Parsec, a desktop streaming software application, as to incorporate those features into Unity Engine
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/386540/Unity_to_acquire_remote_desktop_tool_maker_Parsec_for_320_million.php-
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Sucks. Parsec has proven far more resilient to lag spikes than moonlight or steam streaming. Those two just die and have to be restarted sometimes while parsec just does a super-hitch then keeps going
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Ugh. Game streaming is a dead end, proven over and over again. Waste.
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its funny because i was super big into game streaming about 10 yrs ago with onlive, thinking itd be the end all. but since then we have 144hz monitors, 1440p/4k, and its just too differnet for me to go back to 1080p 30-60fps and 30ms input lag
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This is sort of the issue I've had with it all along (well, one of them) - the tech was always described in the way you'd describe a kid's drawing, couching it in terms to not go too hard on it.
"Well there's lag and artifacts but the tech is impressive considering what all they're having to do" so, if you ignore the shitty parts the rest isn't shitty.
The next prong of that was "well they can only do 720p but at this rate they'll be able to go 1080p before long" well that's great but by the time they can do 1080p we'll be on to 4K. And 120+ Hz monitors. And by the time they're good at that we might be on to... whatever is next. I mean maybe there comes a point at which display tech is as good as it can get (really how dense can you make pixels?) but it seems like they'd always be having to play catchup and spending a ton of time and money trying to figure out how to fit high end graphics through a straw, resources that could be spent better elsewhere.
That all said, if anyone can figure this out it's Microsoft. But if they can't, that's pretty much the ballgame.
Also holy shit this has been "the future" for a decade now?-
I mean this is all true but the argument for game streaming in the short to medium term is that it’s aimed at the enormous majority of people who don’t care about 4K, 60fps, HDR and have never heard the term input lag. The same way most people are fine with streaming Netflix for movies rather than buying a Blu-ray player.
It’s all about expanding the potential user base for a subscription model, and the bet is there is an huge amount of potential gamers who might spend 15 bucks a month on a sub, yet won’t drop 500 on a console. They’re also most likely not the people with 4K TVs.
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Yep. I barely use it for gaming these days but I use it every day to remote into a different computer to run Windows apps on my M1 MBA. The only real complaint I have with it is that it's kinda a battery hog on the MBA but I'm plugged in most of the time so it doesn't matter that much.
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Parsec is good but their competitors are not really RDP and TeamViewer, but rather Teradici and NICE DCV and other PCoIP products, which are already in heavy professional use. Netflix uses NICE DCV, for instance*. Parsec is the scrappy consumer product trying to break into the professional market, but these other players are already there.
* https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/netflix-nicedcv/
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I've used it to do a lot of graphics programming/game reverse engineering on VMs and it's very good. Just as good as moonlight and nvidia game share. Pretty sure it works the exact same way. The benefit of parsec vs moonlight for this is it just all works and having the unified login system. I only ever used their free service. I also used moonlight and that had slightly better quality but would break about half the time when i would log in and I'd spend 10 minutes fixing it. Parsec just worked but it was weird to involve a third party in a connection to a VM on the same network.
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I used it with an Azure GPU instance VM for gaming and it worked well but was pretty expensive so I gave it up.
I use it locally every day to run Werd on a PC and use it from my mac and it works pretty great for that.
Only problem with it is that it uses 4:2:0 chroma subsampling by default. 4:4:4 is available if you pay their subscription but it has steep requirements for the GPU on both ends to encode/decode that quickly at high resolutions.
It's really a "just works" situation if you have it running on physical hardware. It's a little more work to get it to run on a headless VM and it needs to be a VM with a dedicated GPU.
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I was fascinated by who would buy Parsec when I learned about them. Debate settled, I guess.
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Parsec is easily ahead of the game in a lot of ways.
I know multiple studios have been making heavy use of Parsec for remote work.
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