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Microsoft is building a game streaming service and new Xbox consoles

Microsoft is building a game streaming service and new Xbox consoles

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Microsoft has been teasing that it’s working on game streaming from the cloud recently, and today at E3, the company made it official. Phil Spencer, Microsoft’s gaming chief, revealed the company is hard at work building a streaming game service for any device. “Our cloud engineers are building a game streaming network to unlock console gaming on any device,” says Spencer, and the service will work across Xbox, PCs, or phones.

Spencer didn’t give any firm dates on when the service will be available, but he’s previously teased Xbox game streaming within three years. Many have tried and failed to create a game streaming service, and it’s a challenging thing to get right. Sony acquired streaming games service OnLive only to shut it down, and it previously acquired Gaikai, which eventually became part of its PlayStation Now service. Nvidia is trying to stream games to PCs, but all these existing services will suffer some form of latency that hold them back from being widely used.

Spencer also revealed what should be obvious: Microsoft is making new Xbox consoles. According to Spencer, Microsoft’s teams are “deep into architecturing the next Xbox consoles.” Microsoft’s research teams are also working on artificial intelligence for gaming. “Our experts in Microsoft Research are developing the future of gaming AI, so the worlds and characters we enjoy will be more rich and more immersive,” explains Spencer.