Microsoft’s Project xCloud formally announced: Out to the public in 2019

If they're targeting ideal gameplay on 10 mbps with reasonable server ping times, that's putting them in a good place. My phone on LTE is about 70 mbps with maybe 25 ping. My high-speed network at home is more like 90 mbps down and 70 mbps up. My economy internet is closer to 20 down, 10 up.

That's right now, and there have been developments in our local market that are forcing investments past that. This sounds like practical goals, on their part. And I'm glad they specified that this is for an alternative to the home entertainment center, not a replacement. Showing S consoles specifically for the Blade server conversions keeps expectations in check.

With everyone starting to roll out cloud gaming, I am scared we will be tied to this sooner. I don't look forward to this.

This right here is the future.

N.Domixis said:

PSNow wasn't on mobile phones? I thought I remember being there too? Maybe Sony will bring it back now.

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It did, but they changed to limit it to Sony's own phones (all 27 owners) and PC.

EDIT: Actually not even their own phones, that was Remote Play.

Streaming games won't work for another 10 years.

They have Azure servers in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Really interested to try this out. My attempt at streaming with PS Now from here was awful.

This is the future. Good job Microsoft! The next few years will be very interesting. Not only does Sony will have to respond to this I'm expecting Google(they already got something in the works) and Apple both to do something as well as buying and playing games on console marketplaces on mobile devices could hurt their own app stores as well. Begun the cloud wars have.

Akelisrain said:

With everyone starting to roll out cloud gaming, I am scared we will be tied to this sooner. I don't look forward to this.

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Doubt it will ever happen. Even in this video, they still say that consoles absolutely matter and that they want to make it the best experience to play games.

pswii60 said:

It did, but they changed to limit it to Sony's own phones (all 27 owners) and PC.

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Xperia phones have been consistently some of the best android handsets on the market, people have been missing out. First 4K phone on the market, too.

N.Domixis said:

PSNow wasn't on mobile phones? I thought I remember being there too? Maybe Sony will bring it back now.

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It was, then they scaled back to just phones they release, which isn't a lot of product lines. This was even stranger in the TV space, where they sold and marketed their own Bravia line with PSNow functionality, that they've now disabled. I think it's unlikely in the short-term that they would just suddenly flip all of that and start expanding. They scaled everything back for a reason, and I don't think competition elsewhere would factor into that.

Derrick01 said:

I'll pass on anything related to streaming games. But I'm sure like most other terrible things the masses will eventually roll over for it if it's presented to them nicely enough.

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How many comments in cloud related threads do you think you'll rack up in the next twelve months?

Out of all the announcements I have most faith in what MS is doing.

SuikerBrood said:

Have you tried GeForce Now / have you read about Google's Project Stream? If you have enough datacenters nearby you can achieve quite a lot.

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Yes I have tried GeForce Now and I still find it to be very laggy compared with local play.

I'm always interested in new ideas but right now I can't really see what the benefits for me as a gamer would be. Why would I choose this route rather than just downloading my games digitally or buying them in the actual stores? Let's wait and see.

I think there is a big sub-set of gamers that are fine with gaming streaming so it is a good options for these.

For everybody else that didn't want a sub-par experience you need a proper gaming machine.

It is not the future... it is an option for these that can't get a machine for games.

get2sammyb said:

I get all the optimism for Microsoft doing this "the right way" given that it has the right kind of infrastructure to make a play in this space, but I mean... Like PS Now has been around for like four or five years now and hasn't really been pulling up trees. In fact, the only thing I ever really heard about PS Now was people asking for them to add downloads.

I don't really see the big deal? I imagine they're going to do a better job than Sony on it but... Like if you want this kind of thing, you've been able to try it for years now.

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PS Now is quite limited in terms of devices and it's overpriced ($19.99/mo, $44.99/3mo, so that's $180/year).

I hope they just add this as a feature to Game Pass and not as a separate service. Download Game Pass App on your device, choose between download (only on Xbox consoles and PC) or streaming (all devices).

Interested to see how this develops.

I don't think solid, no-cap internet services are endemic enough to make this a reality just yet. It also doesn't help NN recently got shit on...

EDIT: Lol, never mind, I'm dumb. Still, wonder if this'll come to Australia.

Transistor said:

If anyone can do streaming right, it's Microsoft, thanks to their Azure infrastructure

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Amazon and Google are up there, too.

I will definitely play games on this if it supports LTE would love portable halo or forza. Game changer

Kareha said:

Yes I have tried GeForce Now and I still find it to be very laggy compared with local play.

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The most important thing is figuring out how far you are from the datacenters. If you are not close enough then it will be laggy.

Curious to see it in action, especially if it uses that local compute work that the streaming Xbox is set to include.

MosquitoSmasher said:

I'm always interested in new ideas but right now I can't really see what the benefits for me as a gamer would be. Why would I choose this route rather than just downloading my games digitally or buying them in the actual stores? Let's wait and see.

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Well I think the advantage is once you own the games you can play them local or remote. The streaming may be a separate service down the road or at the least an upgraded game pass version. Maybe a console free game pass for $149 a year opposed to a $99 one.

I LOVE this. I'm a dad now and almost never have the opportunity anymore to sit down on my couch to play games, so this is great news all around for me :)

Cloud computing and streaming service is a push I am really excited about. But with all of the streaming services in development I hope costs are reasonable. 4k/60fps streaming will probably be the highest priced tier.

I like the vision but I wouldnt like to see it replace today's gaming experience. I like to own things opposed to license them, for one. And secondly, video compression and latency is a big issue for me. As something for being on the go or your hardware is not available, it's surely nice tech.

Adamska said:

Xperia phones have been consistently some of the best android handsets on the market, people have been missing out. First 4K phone on the market, too.

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They're technically good put personally I find they aesthically bad and ergonomically not great either

CrazyAndy said:

Amazon and Google are up there, too.

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MS has a huge advantage here because they already have tons of first and third party games on their platform ready to be streamed. Google and Amazon are going to have to fight and pay for every port they can get plus find a way to get exclusive content. Major uphill battle.

Protmind said:

I really don't see how this works in the real world. 4k60 is over 15Gbps. That's for video alone. Forget audio, controller throughput, lag considerations, etc. I live in a city of millions and the best I can do (affordably) is about 55Mbps down about 5Mbps up. The best case is video games which today are cleanest, sharpest things you can put on your TV end up looking muddy and compressed like cable TV.

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There is a slight difference between uncompressed video and compressed video

Streaming is coming big time : Google, Microsoft... Who's next ? Amazon ?

Play console games with touch controls must be awesome

Surprising to see that Microsoft is simply slapping down a standard Xbox One motherboard. Don't they use some UWP-like layer for Xbox titles?

Akai said:

Doubt it will ever happen. Even in this video, they still say that consoles absolutely matter and that they want to make it the best experience to play games.

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I certainly hope so. I really enjoy allowing my kids to play my older systems and appreciate what I played.

Ex-Actarus said:

Streaming is coming big time : Google, Microsoft... Who's next ? Amazon ?

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Most likely, they have a big if not bigger infastructure that the other two if I recall.

Kareha said:

Yes I have tried GeForce Now and I still find it to be very laggy compared with local play.

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It's still early days for cloud gaming. Give it a few years and it'll be a much more refined experience. I remember when watching videos on YouTube used to require constant buffering, pausing to let the video load, stutters all over the place, etc. Now it's usually pretty smooth, and once the video starts playing it does so without issues (at least for me). Of course people will be affected by distance from a data center, but all the streaming game providers are building out data centers all over the world because of their growing cloud platforms.

get2sammyb said:

I get all the optimism for Microsoft doing this "the right way" given that it has the right kind of infrastructure to make a play in this space, but I mean... Like PS Now has been around for like four or five years now and hasn't really been pulling up trees. In fact, the only thing I ever really heard about PS Now was people asking for them to add downloads.

I don't really see the big deal? I imagine they're going to do a better job than Sony on it but... Like if you want this kind of thing, you've been able to try it for years now.

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You need a Sony device or a PC and its very expensive.

I'm super-excited for this.

If they had a plan to access to my entire Xbox library in the cloud for a flat £5-10 per month extra, with cloud saves, I'd be so up for this.

Gold + Gamepass + XCloud = massive revenue for MS & great value for gamers who travel.

MosquitoSmasher said:

I'm always interested in new ideas but right now I can't really see what the benefits for me as a gamer would be. Why would I choose this route rather than just downloading my games digitally or buying them in the actual stores? Let's wait and see.

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It's not about choosing a route and sticking to it, but options ^_^

Why wait to get home and play on your Xbox when you could continue your game from where your currently are? I see a service that lets me play all the games I own today from anywhere in the world, without having to bring your Xbox around.

Of course, that's the idealised vision, but I think it's possible (^^)

Becks' said:

They said any device but I don't see this being released on Switch or PS4. It will be mobile phones, tablets and probably PC.

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It will probably also come to all Xbox One's as well. Allowing people to play next gen games on their current gen system.

Rosebud said:

Can you use it on any device or only MS ones? Because Chrome-streaming is hard to beat

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Given Microsoft's recent propensity to have their products and services available on as many platforms as possible, I would expect long-term that from their perspective, if you have a device with a 10-15mbps connection, video decoding hardware, and the ability to plug in a 2-joy-10-button controller or touchscreen, they want their service to function on that. Sticking to just Edge or Microsoft Store applications is not how MS rolls these days. They would want this available on Android, iOS, Apple TV, Chrome, Firefox, PS4, Switch, and more.

Cool, but no thanks. Streaming games is not like streaming videos. I'm not interacting with a video every second.

rebelcrusader said:

You aren't wrong

What if there was a Xbox streaming app for switch

Instant Xbox portable

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I've wanted an Xbox/Nintendo team up for years now. If this is how we get it, I'm all in!

Didn't think they would announce it randomly like this, I guess Google forced their hand.

Protmind said:

I really don't see how this works in the real world. 4k60 is over 15Gbps. That's for video alone. Forget audio, controller throughput, lag considerations, etc. I live in a city of millions and the best I can do (affordably) is about 55Mbps down about 5Mbps up. The best case is video games which today are cleanest, sharpest things you can put on your TV end up looking muddy and compressed like cable TV.

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They are gonna send prores quality video. Lol. HEVC makes this possible.

Wonder how multiplayer is going to run on this can't wait to find out if I can play titanfall 2 @ church I'm there every Sunday

MosquitoSmasher said:

I'm always interested in new ideas but right now I can't really see what the benefits for me as a gamer would be. Why would I choose this route rather than just downloading my games digitally or buying them in the actual stores? Let's wait and see.

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Switch has proved that people value portability. Personally I don't but as someone who only owns a PS4 from current gen and can't justify buying an Xbox one aswell the option to still play their games, my old 360 games, and potentially use game pass without buying a new console is pretty appealing.

Well if I have faith in streaming tech coming from a company, then I certainly think Microsoft will be the leaders in this advancement.

That Azure platform is unreal

The next step is to combine Xbox Live/Games with Gold/Game Pass/Cloud gaming to avoid any confusion. Bundle this all together and we have an intriguing concept, look forward to seeing how this fares!