Pixel Streaming Without the Headaches: How MSquared Makes It Simple

The MSquared platform’s headline feature is scale. It lets you create low-cost, high-quality experiences for thousands of players. We’re talking virtual ballparks, concerts, and shootouts so big that they break Guinness World Records!

Like a music festival, the spotlight often falls on the main stage. But behind the scenes are many other features that make the big show possible. Over the coming months, we’ll be shining a light on some of these powerful but less familiar capabilities. Today, we’re starting with pixel streaming.

Pixel streaming explained

Pixel streaming delivers high frame rate, low-latency interactive experiences. It turns any device with a browser into a powerful gaming machine. For brands, this means you can meet your audience where they already are, without asking them to download heavy clients or own expensive hardware. Your experience looks and feels premium regardless of whether someone joins on a high-end desktop, an older laptop, or even a tablet. It removes barriers to entry, which means higher participation rates, smoother onboarding, and more consistent delivery of the experience you intended. In short, pixel streaming ensures that every member of your audience enjoys the same high-quality, responsive interaction, no matter their setup.

Stream your experience in minutes

Teams of developers sometimes spend months integrating a single pixel streaming solution. On MSquared, it just works. We did the work for you and, when it comes to things like optimisation and maintenance, we continue to do so. The challenge has always been that pixel streaming requires deep technical expertise to stitch together, optimise, and keep running reliably at scale. Without that, teams face ballooning costs, long delays, and brittle setups that struggle to adapt when demand spikes. MSquared solves this by providing an integration that’s ready out of the box, hardened through real-world use, and actively maintained by our engineers. You get the benefit of cutting-edge performance without carrying the burden of complex implementation or ongoing upkeep.

Multi-provider support

MSquared supports multiple pixel streaming solutions, and we’re always evaluating new ones. We take care of the tedious technical work of these integrations. This way, you can stay focused on what truly matters: creating an experience that exceeds your audience’s high expectations.

Optimised for your budget

Picture a pixel streaming datacentre. I see racks of graphics cards, each providing an experience to a happy customer. As Lead Software Engineer Dave Johnston explains, the reality is much better optimised.

Every GPU node that we use to render our experiences can reconfigure itself based on expectations and demand. Graphics-intensive events might benefit from giving each user their very own GPU to maximise fidelity and performance, but for lighter experiences, a single node can service multiple users simultaneously.

MSquared further lowers your costs by checking if a customer has the hardware needed for a native experience. It only offers pixel streaming to those who don’t have it. This way you only pay for pixel streaming sessions that you know you need.

Optimised for your audience

Every audience has different pixel streaming needs. Some need a low volume of always available nodes. Other experiences, like concerts or celebrity AMAs, book a high volume of nodes for a short period of time. Whatever your needs, we deal with requisition on your behalf so you can remain focused on developing your experience.

Each audience is unique. K-pop fans don’t behave like opera audiences. No matter who your audience is or where they are, MSquared offers a low latency experience. We achieve this by booking nodes that are close to your audience.

Accelerate iteration

An unexpected perk of pixel streaming is that it enhances teamwork and speeds up development. As a Quality Assurance Lead, I can’t really overstate the extent to which pixel streaming speeds up my team. Every morning we used to download or, worse, compile that day’s build from the source code. Now I click one button & I’m in.

Organising a playtest is as simple as dropping a link. You can make a local change and test it in a cloud-hosted multiplayer session in just minutes. I used to manage a playtesting lab full of finicky physical development kits. Now, I’ve got my days back thanks to this one-click setup.

This easy access lets our non-technical staff enjoy our experiences and grasp our product better. Because the barrier to entry is so low, everybody at the company feels included. It's a huge plus for our company culture. Now, I receive helpful design feedback and bug reports from our legal and corporate teams!

Own your distribution channels

Pixel streaming solutions are quite opinionated. They like to take control of a user’s device and run in full-screen mode. Sometimes this is great, but other times you want to embed a pixel stream inside your app or website.

Our flexible browser client wraps the pixel stream. This lets you show it any way you want. You’ve worked hard for your audience and, using MSquared, you can address them directly instead of fighting for attention in someone else’s ecosystem.