We feel as though Microsoft, Phil Spencer in particular, has been talking about the ideology behind gaming on platforms as being outdated for some time now. In many interviews, he’s commented how he sees the future as gaming being more of a service that is available on your platform of choice. For some, this has been hard to comprehend as we’ve been stuck in the idea of locked consoles and environments for decades.
Instead, Microsoft has more grand ideas. Imagine a world where Xbox Live, and your Xbox/Windows game library, were accessible on many platforms. You could play on your Xbox One at home, move to a PC in another room, and then play on your phone seamlessly using the same account playing the same game. While it may seem like a pipe dream, Microsoft doesn’t think so. Enter Project xCloud.
Khareem Choudry, Corporate Vice President of Cloud Gaming, has the following to say:
The future of gaming is a world where you are empowered to play the games you want, with the people you want, whenever you want, wherever you are, and on any device of your choosing. Our vision for the evolution of gaming is similar to music and movies — entertainment should be available on demand and accessible from any screen. Today, I’m excited to share with you one of our key projects that will take us on an accelerated journey to that future world: Project xCloud.
Today, the games you play are very much dictated by the device you are using. Project xCloud’s state-of-the-art global game-streaming technology will offer you the freedom to play on the device you want without being locked to a particular device, empowering YOU, the gamers, to be at the center of your gaming experience.
You can find the full release article here : Project xCloud Announcement
Our Take
We find that many among the community are struggling with the concepts Microsoft is putting forth. But given the accelerated rate at which access speeds are increasing, along with Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure, this really isn’t far-fetched. We are extremely interested to see how these tests play out, particularly how Azure can assist in off-loading processing power. We’ll be paying attention to this closely as it develops so stay tuned!
