Xbox Announces New Cloud Gaming Initiative

Completely cloud based games seems like a waste but time will tell.

Definitely a bad sign of things to come

I'd rather buy physical whenever possible.

I can see a time when Cloud based games are the 'biggest', the 'AAA' games, the games with the most complex AI, Physics, destruction etc.

Its going to be more 'sustainable' and 'cheaper' to develop games for a 'cloud' based delivery. Its not sustainable to build 'millions' of units to sell at a 'low' console price point with sufficient processing power to run the games to a 'reasonable' standard to play the games locally. Its going to be increasingly difficult to distribute 'physical' games and have 'sufficient' internal storage to install to SSD - games are already 'too big' for Bluray discs so you have to download some/all of the game.

Its much 'cheaper' to invest in 'super servers' with massive 'Data' storage, able to process RT, Physics, AI etc at high res, ultra settings and 'stream' to a display. The only 'limitation' being the streaming bandwidth and display res. They don't have to worry about storage, CPU, GPU, RAM etc limitations and scaling 'down' for 'limited' console hardware.

I know right now, streaming has 'some' minor drawbacks compared to playing Locally. However, as 'last-gen' hardware shows, you can play games that would 'never' run locally. You'd never get Flight Sim on Console - even on Series S/X because you don't have the Storage capacity for the 'entire' earth at 1:1 but thanks to 'streaming' you can. Thanks to streaming, you can play anywhere...

There is going to be a time when you can stream a game with ALL the visual bells and whistles, running at 60fps (or better) streamed direct to your TV or play a 'visually' scaled down version, capped to 30fps with much lower quality assets, particles, physics etc 'dumbed' down because of the more limited 'hardware' of a console - assuming it can be 'scaled' down enough to run...

The 'same' TV you have your console plugged into could offer a better visual and playing experience - thanks to the power of the Cloud, even offer lower latency (if only because of higher frame rates) so not only look but plays better or play a 'dumbed' down version for much more limited hardware.

In 5-10yrs, who knows if there is enough silicon to meet the 'demands' as 'everything' has chips in. To research, develop, build, distribute etc 'console' hardware will become increasingly expensive. Its much cheaper to use the same silicon as all those 'millions' of consoles into 1000's of 'much more powerful' server chips to run games in the cloud and stream to 'Any' display.

I wonder if Kojima's Cloud 'project' will be the first announced? Its not too different from Xbox Publishing 'Contraband' exclusively for Xbox 'Hardware'. As I said though, Cloud offers a LOT more scope/scale of game as its 'not' limited on storage capacity for example - hence you have the 'entire' globe accessible in Flight Sim...

I imagine that this will be for smaller indie games? I enjoy playing on xcloud but it's always smaller games. Making cloud only blockbuster titles is really going to require a massive infrastructure upgrade globally to allow folks to enjoy them no? Or can the experience on current networks be improved by hardware investemets on the Xbox backend? I'm not techy so i don't have a clue.

I’m going to reserve judgements for when the games actually come out. I will say there are already a number of experiences out there that require streaming etc They aren’t AAA games; they are phone apps, but judging from the presentation they aren’t necessarily speaking of AAA games either.

Great news! Fortunate enough to live in a place where cloud gaming works almost flawlessly at this point. Excited to see what comes of this!

Currently deployed where internet isn't great but xcloud has still been fairly good. Been rocking through ME2 again on my phone and it's pretty awesome. Hardcore gamers might not like it but then again this isn't for them. Options are rarely a bad thing. If more companies support xcloud then good on them.

Kojima Productions' rumored cloud game may seem more legit now that this is a thing.

@IronMan30

I mean, there's a PlayStation there too so it looks like just a background of everything gaming

Flight simulator is a great example at how I see them implementing cloud data. Game runs great on console and it’s already a 100 gigabyte download and streams close to 2 terabytes of data to simulate the weather and effects. I rather have real games on my mobile device then mobile gaming as we know it because they get stale fast.

The article makes it seem like publishers-within-publishers are what makes a second-party contract. This is not so.

It is only second-party publishing development because it'll focus on publishing cloud games from mainly external developers; Xbox Game Studio subsidiary developers - including Bethesda and pals - could very well partner up with the CGO, but that would be redundant with the CGO's very purpose being to seek out & fund new projects.

@Halucigens I've been hesitant to both download and stream this title. May have to get a new SSD and upgrade my internet to accommodate it, lol.

Also don't wanna play without a flight stick, bc what's the fun in a flight sim with a regular ol' controller?

@Jark I bought an 80 dollar thrustmaster flight stick. I think it all depends on how you want to play it. If you just want to go sight seeing every once in awhile the controller works fine. The autopilot when you want to change camera angles and such is pretty good. But if you want to full sim and do flight paths then I’d get a stick. The game is gorgeous and great to have friends and family over and show them places they used to live or have visited.

Hoping for an MS handheld. I'd happily drop $300-450 for one that let's us take our own titles & gamepass titles on the go. They can make a weekly sign on mandatory for Gamepass, similar to how Nintendo does this for their NES/SNES titles for NSO subscribers. I have over 100 games on Xbox now outside of Xbox Game pass, so hoping I can play them all around the house / flights / trains, etc.

@BAMozzy great stuff, have been saying this for a while now. I was an early supporter of Stadia & Google had the right idea with poor implementation as a business model. Honestly, playing Cyberpunk was super smooth and Red Dead Redemption 2 on Stadia looks sweet for just being an app on my TV. Really can't wait for MSFT to show everyone how well cloud can be done moving forward. I'm a fan of physical games too but that might just be an older demographic that doesn't trust digital storefronts and grew up with beautiful game waste of the 90s-2020s. Cloud is great, agree with all of your points above.

I really can't see MS making a dedicated Handheld device. It doesn't make sense when 'Cloud' gaming basically turns any 'mobile' device into a 'portable gaming' device. With partnerships, they can also make 'controller' peripherals to turn your 'mobile' screen into a 'Steam deck/Switch' like device.

I wouldn't be surprised if MS brings out a new Controller, potentially a 'new' Elite V3 with much better Haptics and adaptive triggers. The 'new' app could well be for the remapping, settings, preferences, updates etc. It could even have a 'share' button and that 'leaked' app icon could be for 'remapping' it....