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XBox (Games) Microsoft

Microsoft To Launch Cloud Gaming Service on Xbox Consoles (cnbc.com) 23

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Microsoft is bringing its cloud gaming service to Xbox consoles later this year. From a report: The company announced Tuesday that Xbox Cloud Gaming, which lets players stream games rather than having to install them onto a device, would arrive on its new Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S consoles as well as older Xbox One machines this holiday. American tech giants like Microsoft, Google and Amazon are betting on a future of video games beyond consoles, where subscription services and software will play a much greater role. Though Microsoft is still investing heavily in Xbox hardware, it's also putting a great deal of focus into Xbox Game Pass, a subscription service that gives players access to a library of over 100 titles for about $15 a month. Cloud gaming, where games are hosted on remote servers and streamed to users over the internet, is a big part of Microsoft's strategy. The aim is to attract gamers to the Microsoft ecosystem through a range of different devices.
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Microsoft To Launch Cloud Gaming Service on Xbox Consoles More

Microsoft To Launch Cloud Gaming Service on Xbox Consoles

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  • So they didn't learn (Score:3)

    by IWantMoreSpamPlease ( 571972 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @01:14PM (#61725455) Homepage Journal

    from Stadia?

    • stadia vs gamespass (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @01:27PM (#61725495)

      from Stadia?

      Make me plunk down money for dedicated hardware AND a noticeable monthly fee and I will hesitate. Make it part of my existing XBox games pass and I'll give it a shot. If Google Stadia gave 1 year's worth of free streaming with the purchase of a device, I could imagine it succeeding.

      I am personally neutral on streaming. I would LOVE to be able to play games when traveling or even on breaks at work, whenever we go back to the office. I am skeptical it can be done well.

      Comcast will ensure this will never be viable. They can't even stream their own paid onDemand 1080p videos on their most expensive ISP plan...there's no way I can see this being worthwhile, at least for the shooters I like to play. A slow turn-based strategy game...sure. Doom Eternal? I doubt it. Compared to video streaming...if there's a short hiccup, I'll just keep watching, maybe pause or rewind because I am invested in the movie. With a game, it's much more binary. It's either fun or not. If the latency is high enough to deter from the game, I'll just go read a book or do something else.

      Really, if your game can tolerate latency, I am not sure why you need streaming...an iPad can probably render the graphics just fine for a turn based strategy game. It can't handle fast-paced 3D games, where you really need the good hardware....which is also where bandwidth issues will bite you in the ass. I know they WANT to make it happen. I am not sure it ever will..at least as anything more than a novelty low-cost add on to an existing service.

      • caps will kills this

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Merk42 ( 1906718 )

        Really, if your game can tolerate latency, I am not sure why you need streaming...an iPad can probably render the graphics just fine for a turn based strategy game. It can't handle fast-paced 3D games, where you really need the good hardware....which is also where bandwidth issues will bite you in the ass. I know they WANT to make it happen. I am not sure it ever will..at least as anything more than a novelty low-cost add on to an existing service.

        Just because a game could tolerate latency doesn't mean an iPad would be sufficient for its graphics. Also, there are things outside of graphics, that are hardware intensive.

    • Re:So they didn't learn (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @01:47PM (#61725571)

      So they didn't learn from Stadia?

      You're presumably thinking "the thing everyone learns from Stadia should be that every service which streams gameplay is doomed to fail."

      I suspect that Stadia had much more interesting and nuanced learnings, and that Microsoft folks probably learnt them well. I suspect the learnings are "The underlying technology was mostly good for X% of reachable users, but the financial model of Stadia was wrong for Y% of users. This suggests a huge market potential for a company [like Microsoft] which has both game publishing in-house and data-centers in-house. Let us therefore buy more game studies and plan to dominate this market sector in the long term thanks to our head start on surer footing."

      • There's also additional market pressures which Microsoft may be able to leverage that Google wasn't able to. Right now new gaming equipment is still hard to come by, and costs a premium. With older xBox systems (an audience Google couldn't tap) being able to play newer games, it provides MS with a specific audience of folks who may be looking for stop-gap measures to play the latest games until they can find/afford the latest hardware.

    • What were they supposed to learn from Stadia? (But what else to expect from an FP these years?)

      Looks to me like the main lesson is that lots of people have lots of time and money to waste. Rich people's problems.

      However, combined with your sig, it triggered me to remember "Couch potatoes of the world, unite!" http://eco-epistemology.blogsp... [blogspot.com]

      So how much of "the economy" should be based on the computer game industry? Or in negative terms, how much of the economy can be based on the computer game industry bef

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Stadia is suffering from the Google problem - no one wants to spend money monthly to play a game they paid on the service. It's a confused mix of subscription and purchase - you subscribe to the service (or go for the limited free tier), then pay for the games at full price. Stop subscription, lose game.

      Then Google will inevitably cancel the service, so you really don't want to invest money in the platform because you can lose it all overnight. Google would do well to do have a cancellation plan in place to

    • I tried Stadia free trial period not impressed. Same for Luna. However Geforce Now is quite nice, plus it pulled over 19 of my Steam games and 1 epic game. So far I've just messed with the free tier so if there are available images you can game for an hour. So far its very nice. It will chew through data though. I'm using Cox gigabit with unlimited data, if you have a data cap avoid cloud gaming.

  • What a boring name. They should have named it Microsoft Stopcock - kind of like Valve, but with more cock.

  • I gotta buy your console, then I gotta subscribe to your service, then I can wait a couple minutes every time I want to play a game, and every time my internet has a hicckup, my game, even if single player, freezes, crashes or ceases otherwise?

    How dumb exactly does MS think the average console gamer really is?

    • I don't see the benefit of playing this way on a console capable of playing the same game locally. IMO, the main benefit of a Cloud Gaming Service is playing games on a device that couldn't actually run that game locally (ex: a very basic Windows laptop with integrated video card). Maybe in the future you could play demanding Xbox Series X games on a Xbox One through a cloud service, but there are no games in that category right now.

      • My guess is that this is some way to test the waters, if this test balloon flies, the next gen console will basically be a dumb terminal that has barely enough horsepower to display the data from the net.

        One of the key problems for console makers lately was that the consoles themselves are sold at a heavy loss, with the hope to recover that with game sales. This could be the chance to sell dirt cheap consoles and actually make money with them too. Especially since gamers are used to shelling out 600-800 buc

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