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XBox (Games) Microsoft

Microsoft's Next Xbox, Coming 2028, Envisions Hybrid Computing (theverge.com) 42

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The documents in the FTC v. Microsoft case also reveal Microsoft's far future plans for 2028 -- by which the company believed it could achieve "full convergence" of its cloud gaming platform and physical hardware to deliver "cloud hybrid games." From a report: "Our vision: develop a next generation hybrid game platform capable of leveraging the combined power of the client and cloud to deliver deeper immersion and entirely new classes of game experiences." Those are the words on just one slide from a leaked presentation dubbed "The Next Generation of Gaming at Microsoft," which appears to be a May 2022 pitch document entirely around this idea. The company imagined you playing these games using the combined power of a sub-$99 gadget -- possibly a handheld -- and its xCloud platform simultaneously.
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Microsoft's Next Xbox, Coming 2028, Envisions Hybrid Computing More

Microsoft's Next Xbox, Coming 2028, Envisions Hybrid Computing

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  • microsoft holds the purse strings and the control.

    • XBOX 4K only $2.99/HR (games not included) your ISP may also bill you for data usage.

      • I recognize that it's hyperbole... but that will never, never, never happen. "Never say never? I say never!" (apologies to Chris Rock).

        If you want to sip at the glorious stream of ongoing subscriptions, you can't make it cost prohibitive. And $2.99 / hr is cost prohibitive.

    • ... both electric and gas powered; you'll have to vent your Xbox outside.
      On the upside, it'll work in a power outage, though you'll need a hybrid monitor too ...

      • It's important to me that I can run it off of my bank of 40 marine batteries. I've got 64,000m3 of solar panels charging them. I was growing vegetables on that land, but fuck that. As long as I can get 60 minutes on a charge, I can make it work.

  • Sony said the same stuff about the PS2. Said they would put the emotion engine in their other products and it would enable new types of gaming. Not only did they not follow through on their promises but developers would never have embraced their idea. It was too much work. Same here.

    • Hmmm... I'm not sure that using a 23 year old example of failing to deliver on a use case as a predictor of failure in 2028 is valid. A great many of the mature gamers when that lands will not have been born when the PS2 was released.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by noodler ( 724788 )

      To be fair, M$ also said this with the xbox. And the 360. And the one. In fact, they have been whoring this concept on and off for about two decades now. Same like them saying that windows will run from the cloud in the future.

  • Oh, that sounds like a blast for handheld gaming! Sign my handheld up for a cellular plan with unlimited data ($40/month). Everyone is streaming their games on the same tower! You can't get 5G reception. You're out of cellular range in your car. Good luck with that.

    Probably doesn't matter for a TV console, but I'll pass on any handheld that does this.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Calydor ( 739835 )

      Even for a stationary console the bandwidth requirements for gaming via the cloud are astronomical compared to what's just required to play online with others today. That kind of gaming would be 'Fiber or GTFO, scrub'.

      • I really depends what kind of gaming you're doing. For stuff that requires precision / speed of reaction (FPS, competitive RTS etc.) I agree.. but as someone that has used GeForce Now, which is exactly what you describe (cloud gaming, rendered on their server and my computer being just a client), I'd say it works remarkably well for a lot of single player games. I get very little slowdown, the graphics are miles ahead of what my potato computer can render, and I don't feel substantial lag (there is a little

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Calydor ( 739835 )

          Hello there. My ISP has no options above 1.2 mbps down where I live.

          I would kill people for your speeds.

    • Yeah I've tried local streaming with Steam to my laptop and it works pretty well but not well enough that it'd work if the game rendering was being done 'in the cloud'. Even with an RTS it would need to degrade the video from time to time, the sort of things that would handle it without any hitches can also probably run locally on a potato.

  • In their heads, I imagine they see this as a move where they will leverage the awesome power of Azure to reinforce the XBox experience such as it is.

    In reality, XBox is now just the "Windows reference gaming platform" thanks to the fact that modern Windows PCs with good specs can play XBox games.

    People game on Windows for two reasons: it has really great gaming support and they already have to use it for many other things. Every cloud play for consumers takes out pieces of the argument for Windows, which by

  • That totally prioritizes what MS wants as a vendor, with no regard for what actually provides value to the enduser.

    Nothing like trying to utterly obliterate any semblance of ownership, forcing the userbase to have to continually pay to retain access to their existing experiences. Welcome to a market where there's almost no incentive to create new works because you make just as much revenue off of old properties still in use as a new effort.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HBI ( 10338492 )

      The thing at MSFT is that they feel they lack relevance without migration to cloud across the board. Every on-premises product is up on the chopping block, and it's just a matter of when. Ironically, they are also aware they are losing to AWS in terms of cloud hosting. They bet the farm on this, and there's not really any going back. Their desktop monopoly and Office will not finance too many more whiffs. So expect more and more pushing to the cloud from them, they have no other options.

  • It runs on gas and electricity...

  • Anyone know the bandwidth of 1920x1080 pixels 60 times per second? I think it's like 5 gigabits per second. OH WAIT, let's just encode it and lower the quality! That's what I want is to use all the bandwidth of my entire college/house/apartment to see lower quality. Oh wait, that introduces a gigantic encoding and delivery delay. Any delay above about 50ms is too high for me and I'm not even that competitive. I believe averages were 5x that in similar services.

    Do you really think competitive gamers are go

    • gooding luck gameing on NFL Sundays when NFL Sunday ticket is eating the neighborhood's network

      • Gee.. finding it impractical for 0.13% of the time. Might have to put the controller down for 4 hours.

        • Your calculations seem to be based on not having anything else to do, ever, which must be nice for you, but I assure you that lots of the rest of us have to work, sleep on a schedule based on work, have families, relationships, etc. The four hours you're referring to happens to fall right into one of the common time periods when people aren't consumed with the rest of that - which would be why people who like that sort of thing are watching football during it. Duh.

          • Hah, okay. Well, given the fact that I can tell nothing about other people's schedules, the only certainty I have is the total number of hours in the period. Everything else is assumption Some people are unemployed, single, without families. Some people sleep less than other people. Some people don't game on super bowl Sunday. Some are watching the super bowl.

            But even granting all of that, let's say that the total free time available to anybody works out to 2 hours per day (less on weekdays, more on weekend

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Junta ( 36770 )

      They have seen attempt after attempt to do "cloud gaming" fall short, but it's *such* an appealing business prospect to have gamers paying for continuous access with some smokescreen for the change in business model from transactional to recurring revenue.

      Here, the key word is 'hybrid'. MS has seen that the attempts have all fallen short of commercial success, and are pinning hopes on vaguely 'hybrid' to enable somehow binding titles to the 'cloud', but with a local control/graphics loop for things that ma

    • They're not going to try to feed you 1920x1080 pixels 60 times a second. It's not a video stream. It'll be the same sort of way that your CPU talks to your GPU. It won't send pixel-specific instruction. More like "draw me a triangle such that..." A handful of bytes instead of a bitmap.

      Actually, even 60hz 10080p tops out at under 10Mbps.

  • Some cloud native workloads run on the the cloud, and some claud native workloads run on the local datacenter. And they move back and forth elastically depending on resource needs .

    In this case, the local datacenter is just one machine (the next Xbox series XLL-R-S-Plus+ or whatever they call the next iterartion) . The local hardware will be tailored for Latency sensitive workloads, while the raw computing workloads will take place on Microsoft's cloud. Games, instead of being monolithic apps, will probably

  • Have you ridden most subway/metro/BART systems lately? If that's a regular commute for you, and you want to play games to kill the time, cloud connectivity + latency is gonna frustrate you. (Of course by 2028 all the Telcos will support underground transportation systems with generous caps. /s)

    Farsight Pinball Arcade simulated, licensed pinball machines don't require quarters or the cloud, hint, hint. Ghostbusters and Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3d are highly recommended, but there's also Adam's Famil

  • It's a weapon of control, a roach motel designed to lure you in and then prevent escape
    Run Away!

  • Crackdown 3 was supposed to use this for calculating physics. It was too slow, even over fast internet.
  • I love gaming on a switch or iPad. I'd love to move around the house and play a quick game before bed or let someone else have the living room. I hate that they can't play as nice of games as my XSX. If I could have a device that gave me a next-gen XBox experience in a switch form factor and used my local network instead of an ISP, I'd personally not mind buying both a full priced console and a special handheld device. I've wanted this for a long time. In fact, I'd buy 2 consoles if they both could be
  • 1. Design it for cloud gaming It's worked very well for Google Stadia and for that the hardware cost $0. Imagine when Microsoft releases a garbage sub $99 hardware that is less powerful than your phone.

  • > The company imagined you playing these games using the combined power of a sub-$99 gadget -- possibly a handheld -- and its xCloud platform simultaneously.

    So... the Stadia?

  • What they did was look at Diablo 3, that's technically a 'hybrid' system. It runs the game client on your system, and it 'integrates' with the online services that generates the maps, creature placement etc, turning it into an online game even if you're playing solo.

    It's impossible to pirate Diablo 3 because Blizzard holds the servers, the other half of the data. Blizzard can make any changes to it, and there is nothing you can do. If they end the service, you can't possibly play it anymore, and the way the

  • I love compression artifacts.
  • Microsoft's forward-thinking approach envisions a seamless blend of cloud gaming and physical hardware, promising immersive gaming experiences. Their 2028 vision reflects the industry's evolving landscape and the potential for innovation. Should try it for sure :)

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