Getting some Thanos vibes here! Microsoft believes that cloud gaming is inevitable, though the firm has no doubt that the technology is years from going mainstream.
The software titan is heavily involved in the space, and actually has a few friends in the game, too.
The likes of Apple and Google, the former of which has already unveiled its Stadia service.
Microsoft is also on track with the launch of Project Xcloud, planned for later in 2019. This new service will let users stream Xbox games not just to consoles and PCs, but also mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
Redmond actually put up a detailed blog post that went over what the company is planning for this new launch, along with a whole bunch of technical information regarding the service.
This is all powered by the magic of the Azure cloud platform, of course.
That said, Microsoft is not exactly getting carried away here, and for good reason. There are still a few technical hurdles to overcome.
Xbox boss Phil Spencer went over some of these in a recent interview with Gamespot, tampering near term expectations for what some believe may be a streaming gaming revolution. The gaming chief over at Microsoft does not want to oversell the speed of the transition.
His words:
“I think streaming is years away from being a mainstream way people play. And I mean years, like years and years.”
He compared this to the time it took for Netflix to transition to this cloud powered model of streaming movies, saying that we should not be expecting things to happen overnight:
“I think game streaming will get there faster than 20 years, but it’s not going to be two years. This is a technological change. While it seems like it happens overnight, it doesn’t.”
Sage advice.
Ultimately, Microsoft is focused on bringing convenience and choice to gamers, no matter which device they are using to play on. There will be a lot of innovation happening over at Azure datacenters to make this dream a reality, and we already have had some details trickle out about what they are.
All that said, Spencer tampered down the reports that Microsoft was still planning a low-cost Xcloud console, saying directly that the company is not working on a streaming only console.
