Phil Spencer Wants to Bring xCloud to Every Screen That Someone Can Stream Games to - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 February 2021 / 2,670 Views
Microsoft announced this week their cloud gaming service, Project xCloud, will join Xbox Game Pass Ultimate in September at no additional cost.
Head of Xbox Phil Spencer in an interview with The Verge discussed his vision and goals for Project xCloud. Launching it as part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is just the start of it. With the cloud service Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will be able to play all of their Game Pass games on the go through their mobile devices.
"Over time we will continue to expand how we introduce streaming as part of the platform, and playing games that you own that aren’t part of the subscription," said Spencer. "For launch we’re putting it in Ultimate for no additional cost. We think it’s a good audience for us to start with, and it’s an audience that plays a lot of games."
"We want to bring xCloud, eventually, to every screen that someone can stream games to," he added. "Right now we’re just saying mobile. There are discussions going on and we’re working through things. We’ll talk more specifically about which mobile devices through August and the September launch.
"We want that trial to be as easy as it is in music and video today, where I can send you a track in Spotify today and you can stream it instantly. Over time, anywhere I see a game I should be able to give it a try."
Microsoft's next generation console, the Xbox Series X, will launch in Holiday 2020.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I'm very interested to see where this goes. It is much more appealing to me than Stadia. Also, they seem to be taking a more measured approach to rolling it out, so as to build it up slowly. That seems much more likely to avoid disappointing people and losing them forever, as seems to have happened with Stadia.
Bring it for PS5 at maximum quality and instead of buying 3rd party games I'll sign in every month I want to play some of those games.
I'm sure they'd happily put it on PS5 if they could strike a reasonable deal with Sony. That would be the best possible audience for it, possibly even better than the XB user base.
I doubt Sony has any interest in people playing Xbox games on their platform. Even if that would arguably benefit Sony.
If MS could make a price for GP that offers MS exclusives without needing a XBL account and doesn't have third party games I think Sony would accept, but that would kinda defeat the purpose of GP and even more because it would be restricted library and price instead of play anywhere.
xCloud is free with Ultimate, which is Gamepass and Gold combined. Maybe there will be a cheaper subscription service that just allows you to stream games you own?
The problem is I feel Sony would ask for too much. For example, Sony might not want people playing multiplat games on xCloud via PS5. Nor do I believe Sony wants people playing Xbox games on their platform. I just don't see it happening, would be fine if I was wrong.
Yep I don't neither would give in enough to allow an agreement. It is just that I would be happy to have GP+XCloud available on PS5 for the 3rd parties and sometimes MS content if I could just select a month there is content I like and pay a small fee for it.
There would be no reason at all to buy an XB if XB exclusives were available on PS via Gamepass.
Now that I think of it, the best case scenario is Gamepass on everything, and XB controllers for all systems.
This service got my attention, now Xbox needs to make some games that appeal to me, something that didn't happen for almost 10 years.
Their biggest issue right now. Will see if they can fix it
Why wouldn't they want to bring this service to as many screens as possible?
xCloud is going to be great! I hope Xbox will integrate it and gamepass into Steam like Geforce Now did
In September GP Ultimate will include XCloud for free to play on phones and tablets;
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