Microsoft Announces Project Xcloud For Streaming Games To PCs, Consoles, and Mobile Devices

Microsoft has unveiled "Project xCloud," its new game streaming service designed to work across consoles, PCs, and mobile devices. "Scaling and building out Project xCloud is a multi-year journey for us," explains Microsoft's cloud gaming chief Kareem Choudhry in a blog post. "We'll begin public trials in 2019 so we can learn and scale with different volumes and locations." The Verge reports: Microsoft has built custom hardware for its datacenters, as The Verge previously exclusively reported, so that existing and future Xbox games will be compatible with the services. Games will be streamed to devices, and Microsoft has been testing the xCloud service with Xbox wireless controllers connected to consoles, mobile devices, and PCs. Microsoft says its research teams are "creating ways to combat latency" via advanced network techniques combined with video encoding and decoding. This should make game streaming viable on 4G networks, too.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:

[olsmeister]

5g home broadband is rolling out now, no caps (yet) and super low latency.

Re:No thanks

[Rick Schumann]

Oh but Tim, don't you know the new hotness is to rent EVERYTHING in your life? 'Owning things' is SO Last Thursday! Owning things is what OLD PEOPLE who still think AOL is 'the internet'! You do't want people to think you're an OLD PERSON do you? </sarcasm>

In all seriousness: I think this is what The Rich and Corporations want: make everyone believe that renting everything and owning nothing is somehow better. Lease a car or pay Uber/Lyft all the time, rent your house, rent your computer, rent your OS and applications, and so on. That way you pay, pay, PAY forever, making The Rich richer. Glad to see you aren't falling for it.

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[account_deleted]

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[Rick Schumann]

Go research 'feudalism' and 'sharecropper' and tell me there aren't parallels. Also you sit there and tell me that never owning a home, never having the value of that home to borrow against, is somehow better. You're being taken for a fool and you don't even realize it because you only think in the short term.

Re:

[Rick Schumann]

Go right on being an idiot, we all need someone to laugh at.

In the US, you do not own your home

[lamer01]

Ownership is an illusion. You are allowed to pretend you own it by the incorporated town you live in. Do not pay your taxes and see how quickly you stop owning it.

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[Rick Schumann]

How much do they pay you to astroturf for the corporations that want everyone to forget about owning things? Do they pay you by the word, the post, or is it a monthly stipend?

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[Rick Schumann]

I buy few movies and when I do I watch them enough times to justify it. I also have BOOKS and (shocking!!!) READ THEM MORE THAN ONCE. You own enough books, movies, and music, and eventually it's all like it's new again. Or I guess you can be a fool who has to pay EVERY SINGLE TIME you want to watch or listen to something. I think you people are fucking stupid, flat-out, and these corporations are laughing at you all the way to the bank. You probably also think that fast food burgers are cheaper than making

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[Rick Schumann]

I don't need to buy movies every month. In fact it's been at least a year since I bought any DVDs. I buy copies of things I know I want around to watch again. Most movies and TV shows I watch exactly once. TV is free (for me, LOL) and going to a movie theatre is so much better than watching it on a TV screen. For movies that don't warrant going to a theatre, paying $1 or $1.50 for Redbox is a great deal. I listen to FM broadcast radio so I pay nothing for that. But do go right ahead and keep letting your 's

Re:

[Rick Schumann]

Listen you dumb shit.. am I supposed to wait a year or two to see any movie so I can buy it on DVD and never go to a theatre? Does Redbox charge me a monthly fee or a one-time fee to borrow a goddamned disk? You are paying every month for something you may or may not use, and you don't get to keep ANYTHING, you only get it as long as you keep paying and paying and paying, month after month.

Meanwhile HOAs have gone out of their way for at least 20 years now to make it difficult for people to own a home.

Xbox Failure - MS Exiting Console Market

[L_R_Shaw]

Microsoft is 0 for 3 in the console market after some sixteen years or so.

The first Xbox marketplace failure just barely avoided coming in last place due to Nintendo dumping the GameCube a few months earlier.

The second Xbox came in last place worldwide despite being rushed out the door a year early compared to the PS3 and having the 'luxury' of the RRoD hardware fiasco that led Xbox owners to buy tens of millions of duplicate consoles.

The third Xbox is going to be dumped into last place by the Switch. It's

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[110010001000]

Console fanboys are funny. Microsoft has TEN TIMES the market cap of Sony and a net income of $28 billion (7x sony net income). I don't think they are hurting. I feel that Slashdot readers are completely out of touch with reality, even though the Internet exists and you can easily look up data.

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[L_R_Shaw]

"what if the top stakeholders in MS see the console division as a boat anchor and cut it loose like google's cutting loose G+?"

The Xbox failure and losses were so bad that at for a time Microsoft was hiding them by including Mac Microsoft Office profits(as crazy as that sounds) in the Xbox's division's quarterly report numbers.

It was completely understandable back in 2001-2 for clueless people like 110010001000 to engage in Microsoft fanboyism and their prospects in the console market.

But in 2018, it is jus

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[110010001000]

I am not Microsoft fanboy. What a joke. Considering the XBox revenue is in the billions I doubt Microsoft is going to abandon the market though. It is just funny how people take the console brands so personally. I don't own any console (or any Microsoft product). I just find you guys to be amusing because you disregard all available data in favor of your "team of choice".

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[Pinky's Brain]

It's billions of dollars of distraction. XBox does nothing to promote windows, yet it has caused perversive incentives to cripple Windows and loss of focus to improve it for gaming and multimedia. The loss of market-share to chromebooks at the bottom and macbooks at the top can not be compensated by XBox income. Would they have still lost it without XBox, probably ... but maybe not.

The ascendancy of sandboxing on windows is over a decade late and crippled by the monetization model (again perverse incentives

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[110010001000]

What if any company abandons a product? Stick with Open Source, kid and you won't have that problem.

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[Merk42]

Open source projects get abandoned all the time though?

Re:

[L_R_Shaw]

Boggle.

I remember these inane posts from back 2001-2. Bill Gates was going to walk right into the console market and own it with 'pocket change'. And Microsoft has '50 billion' in the bank.

That was sixteen years ago. To see someone spouting that same drivel in 2018 is just sad.

It is no secret why Microsoft got destroyed by Sony in the console market:

* Hardware - despite Microsoft's 'billions' they never were smart enough to invest in the console hardware design and manufacturing needed to be ablet to compet

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[110010001000]

Yeah. I didn't think of that. Only 30 million consoles sold. I never understand why you guys get so into your "brand". Really weird. Whatever gets you excited I guess.

Re:

[AHuxley]

But the CPU, GPU and "internet" is finally really ready for the ad tech now.
Think of placing real time ads in 4K ready games.
A new ad in real time every time the user plays a section of that game.

Re:

[bobstreo]

Nah, the original Xbox was great when XBMC first came out. It kinda ran linux too. Toss in a nice big hard drive and you were good to go. Not bad for the $20-$50 a used Xbox was going for.

They got so cheap, I gave some to people, and would stop by every month or so to toss another couple hundred GB of new content onto them.

Re:

[im_thatoneguy]

avoided coming in last place due to Nintendo dumping the GameCube a few months earlier.

Or rephrased by someone other than a 12 year old fanboy troll. "Just barely avoided coming in third place due to Nintendo dumping the GameCube a few months earlier".

When there are really only 3 competitors "Last" is relative. The question is "Did they make money?" If the answer is yes it wasn't a "marketplace failure". iPhone by your metric "barely has avoided last place" thanks to Windows Phone being released.

Re:

[L_R_Shaw]

You're like the person taking a driving test who manages to hit EVERY SINGLE CONE.

Every single in your rambling post is objectively wrong. Not only is every single thing you posted objectively wrong, anyone with absolutely no knowledge of the console console market can see that you are wrong with just a minute of searching.

Congrats!

"When there are really only 3 competitors "Last" is relative."

last: coming after all others in time or order; final.

Moving on...

PS2 sold about 155 million consoles worldwide.
Game

Re:

[im_thatoneguy]

Thank you for reiterating that they were in second place. Just like the iPhone is in second place for smartphones sold to Android. So clearly it's a colossal failure like the Xbox. :eye roll:

Playstation 3 sold 86 million
360 sold 85 million
Wow, another Spectacular failure, narrowly missing last place...

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[L_R_Shaw]

LOL!

Did you just post Xbox 360 numbers to 'refute' Xbox numbers???

Say hello to your friends on the Short Bus to school tomorrow...

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[account_deleted]

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[sexconker]

OoT was better than MM
Wind Waker was better than MM.
BotW was better than MM. Almost as good as OoT.
MM was better than SS and maybe TP.

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[sexconker]

Shit. Meant to spell out Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess. (If you don't know OoT or BotW you're a bad person.)

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[HornWumpus]

The last game I'd call art was: 'Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time.'

That was brilliant, the purpose of the game was to find the game.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Play through The Witcher 3 and come back and tell me when the golden era of video games was.

Predicted

[duke_cheetah2003]

I had previously predicted someone would do this. Looks like they did.

My feelings are mixed. It's a cool technology that would enable older devices to run new games, but yeah, this probably won't be cheap and you get locked in to a 'remote system' you can't touch.

I think this qualifies for a 'Good luck with that!'

Streaming = laggy

[omfglearntoplay]

I wouldn't waste my money on renting something anyway, but stream screams laggy, which would make me scream in a continuous stream. Haha. But yeah, no thanks.

Miss me with that gay shit

[philmarcracken]

Total control over everything; this is far worse than your usual thin client. With those you could at least attempt some middle man sniffer, decrypt, reverse engineer something it was expecting and slowly build your own private server.
This is an abomination just like every non live streaming service and I hope it never prospers. Given the idiocy of the average user its sadly going still going to.