Cloud Gaming Coming to the Xbox?
by William D'Angelo, posted on 14 November 2011 / 1,872 Views
Brian Prince, the Microsoft cloud developer, might have have let slip some big news while speaking at GDC China. The main focus of his talk was about Microsoft's new Azure cloud service, he did mention that the cloud will be coming to the Xbox, which could signify cloud gaming on the platform in the future.
"You will be seeing things in the Xbox platform that's cloud-specific. I'm already doing it, it's really exciting, but I can't tell you about it or else I'll get fired," said Prince.
Talking about current cloud gaming services like OnLive, Prince had this to say, "These are really gaming platforms as a service. There are some limitations here, but I really do think this is the distant future of gaming in the cloud."
Prince sees two problems with current cloud gaming. "Typically these platforms focus on AAA PC game titles. If you're not in that space, they don't want to talk to you as much. Another problem is that your gamers need high speed internet access. That's fine if you live in a city, but most of America doesn't live in a city, for example."
Prince also admits that Microsoft products have not been the most user friendly in the past, but that its new Azure cloud service will be different. "At Microsoft we generally write everything as though everyone's a .Net developer. Turns out not everyone's a .Net developer. So we wrote the tool kits for those other developers so it works how that expects."
