Microsoft is unveiling its game streaming service for the first time today. Dubbed Project xCloud, it’s designed to work across consoles, PCs, and even mobile devices. “Scaling and building out Project xCloud is a multi-year journey for us,” explains Microsoft’s cloud gaming chief Kareem Choudhry. “We’ll begin public trials in 2019 so we can learn and scale with different volumes and locations.”
Microsoft has built custom hardware for its datacenters, as The Verge previously exclusively reported, so that existing and future Xbox games will be compatible with the services. Games will be streamed to devices, and Microsoft has been testing the xCloud service with Xbox wireless controllers connected to consoles, mobile devices, and PCs. Microsoft says its research teams are “creating ways to combat latency” via advanced network techniques combined with video encoding and decoding. This should make game streaming viable on 4G networks, too.
Public trials of the service will begin next year, and Microsoft’s Xbox game streaming service will face competition from a variety of existing services. The most popular include GeForce Now, PlayStation Now, Shadow, and Liquid Sky. Microsoft’s xCloud unveiling comes just days after Google announced its own Project Stream service that will let testers play Assassin’s Creed Odyssey through its Chrome browser on a laptop or desktop. Microsoft isn’t revealing exactly what it’s doing differently than the competition, but we’ll find out more details when public testing starts in 2019.
Comments
Game streaming offers a lot of benefits, but what happens to the hardware industry when this becomes mainstream? Forget latency for a second, and pretend that it can be solved without any issues. You still have a massive hardware based industry that suddenly becomes irrelevant.
No one will build a gaming PC when you can play all the latest and future games on a $500 laptop from 6 years ago (at the same quality and framerate). Hardware in consoles becomes irrelevant. What CPU/GPU combo will be in the PS6? It won’t matter, because at this rate, there won’t be a PS6. The hardware industry implodes, and hardware enthusiasts who love talking about CPUs/GPUs etc, suddenly have a huge part of their gaming interest stripped away.
By CoffeePenguin on 10.08.18 10:00am
Quite a disruptive technology – I agree. From a consumer perspective, it’s a rosy future.
Pay for a sub £50 box that allows you to play A+ games at 1080p resolution, watch whatever TV service you want… – No need for consoles, no need for overpowered PCs. Allows you to spend more money on games, and less on hardware.
Play the game on you home TV – pick it up at lunchtime on your browser at work, and continue on the journey home on your tablet.
Another medium moving to streaming services.
Win Win.
By Abid Hussain on 10.08.18 10:08am
Correct the majority of gamers will not have a powerful console or PC in the future. When you have access to Fiber and 5G, why have a gaming system? We already see this today. Why have a DVD player when you have internet? Why have an expensive laptop when you have a Chromebook? Why pay a ton for new music each month when you can have it all for $10 a month or buy a whole album when you can buy the one song you wanted? People will embrace it because they don’t have to shell out a lump sum of $500 every 4 years. Eliminating the purchasing a hardware hurdle will bring more customers. It’s a race to be the next Netflix in Gaming.
By phspman on 10.08.18 10:37am
This is an excellent analogy. Game Streaming doesn’t even need to be pixel perfect and match the fidelity of actual hardware running the game natively. Once it becomes just good enough, majority of the people would stop caring. Blu-rays have much higher quality than a Netflix stream, and same goes for physical music disc’s. But people are more than happy to go the Netflix / Spotify route because it’s more convenient.
By UzEE on 10.08.18 11:07am
Relax.
It will be a slow death.
It will take them time to figure it out, implement the technologies etc. They already said it’s a multi-year journey. They’ll start with games like Minecraft and will be a long time before they can do Caller Doody well.
People still have kit cars even though the trend is electric and autonomous.
By NofanBoy on 10.08.18 11:06am
It will have an effect, but the games will still need to be rendered somewhere. The CPU and GPU development will shift from consumers to products that support virtualization and scaling. I imagine overall spending will still start to trend downward as efficiencies are developed but the core components will still be needed.
On the consumer side, I’m guessing hardcore gamers will shift their spending to other areas like gaming routers/wireless cards to get the absolute best speeds and optimizations for the latest streaming tech as well as spending more on control methods. I also imagine that the subset of gamers who like RGB lighting will still spend on those things and other hardware upgrades as they will unreasonably think they help their gaming or they just like to show off their builds.
I think that the big shift allowed by this tech will be more people playing better games. It will certainly cause a disruption, but I don’t think it will be catastrophic.
By shabanga on 10.08.18 11:07am
What about steam engine enthusiasts? And has anyone spared a thought for musket manufacturers? Or what about people who really, really like morse code devices.
The world moves on, parts of it become obsolete. That’s just how it works. Trying to stop progress to please a few enthusiasts of obsolete technology would be pretty pointless.
By BlackToe on 10.08.18 11:21am
Thats one hell of an assumption right there.
If the gaming community can be categorized with one trait, it is that they are always craving the best possible gaming experience, the fastest "rig", and so on.
Any streaming solution which follows the laws of physics isn’t going to chime well with hardcore gamers in this regard.
For more casual gamers however, it could well be very appealing. Interesting to see what the financial models look like, guess subscription only?
By scoob101 on 10.08.18 11:23am
Hi grandpa!
By llort on 10.08.18 1:41pm
As someone who uses a mac, please bring it on.
By The Drifter on 10.08.18 1:43pm
Don’t think hardware fans will ever go away. Also someone will have to have the Hardware to run the streaming service. Those hardware buffs can now debate about which streaming server hardware is better….
By Fritz Javel on 10.09.18 10:38am
Its nothing to do with hardware. Its to do with the fact that remote steaming simply is a bad way to play certain types of games.
The difference in quality between netflix and blu ray – most people dont care about.
The difference between twitch shooters played on a local machine vs a streamed session – everybody will care about – when they realize how bad it is.
By scoob101 on 10.09.18 10:41am
With Streaming Service, comes streaming subscriptions…….If Microsoft can lock you into a 10-20-30$/month subscription for XBOX streaming, they would make way more money than an up front (1) time charge of 299/399$, every 5 years or so. Its simple math, its the reason they went the Office 365 subscription route, etc. Prime example – my office of 100+ people still uses Office 2010, which they paid say 200$ per seat, over 8 years……….
(100) Licenses X 200$/License = $20,000
Office 365 is 15$/user/month, so……
15$ X 100 users = $1,500
$1,500 X 96 months (8 years) = $144,000
Not even close……….that being said – id be happy to pay an XBOX subscription if i could play my games everywhere. Problem, is the places i would want to play the most (on my subway/train commute, where cell service is spotty at best), it wouldnt be ideal.
By NAS81 on 10.10.18 9:21am
So… we still need a Windows PC or XBox to play games ? That’s a pity !
Does anyone here is testing nVidia GeForce Now ? I’m still waiting for my token but I do have played a whole bunch of AAA games in full specs on a 2015 friend’s MBA, and that was absolutely terrific (got a 100MB fiber connexion so it may help).
Guess the winner will be the cheaper…
By Joneskind on 10.08.18 10:08am
They literally just showed some one streaming a game on an Android phone in the video.
By TheCudder on 10.08.18 12:21pm
The proposed GeForce Now pricing is disqualifying… by the hour.
But… it works exceptionally well.
By BulletTooth_Tony on 10.08.18 4:28pm
Loving the vibes Microsoft is giving in the video. With how far game streaming has come from the OnLive days, I really think that Microsoft can deliver on their claims of seamless game streaming, especially in a stable environment like in your own home. I mean, you can see the difference by using PlayStation Now. It runs incredibly well compared to OnLive back in the day.
By russellwatters on 10.08.18 10:09am
The Switch proved the value of this quality gaming everywhere concept, but, especially when 5G comes online, it’s really the cloud that will take this to the next level.
Microsoft working ahead of the curve here. Well done.
By jake-the-bear on 10.08.18 10:10am
This way they can test the platform and get it running smoothly before launching a streaming Xbox device for the 2020 holiday season. Makes sense.
By NC Wood on 10.08.18 10:24am
Once the latency issues are solved and networks can stream in high quality (1080P or higher at over 60FPS) this will become the new norm for sure. I worry about what happens to the hardware industry as well. We switch from buying expensive gaming PCs or building them or consoles and instead pay for yet another monthly fee to stream games instead. What happens to the ownership of those games? What if we want to play them years later? Will the history of videogames be archived and preserved still like many organizations and groups do now with old console and PC games? As someone else said, this will be a very disruptive technology. We are still years out from streaming being the superior choice but for a mainstream audience I can see it picking up steam quickly.
By Frostburn7 on 10.08.18 10:34am
I`m really interested to see what "Solved" looks like, given how inflexible the speed of light is.
By scoob101 on 10.08.18 11:27am
Speed of light is inflexible, but the distance it travels can be changed.
By bit_junky on 10.08.18 1:42pm
I imagine this ties in heavily with the fact that one of the fastest growing industries for the big fish is cloud hosting. There is so much R&D in that space that it is exciting where it will go next.
By K-C-B on 10.08.18 10:03pm
Yes because building DC`s is cheap
/s
By scoob101 on 10.09.18 3:59am
You seem to assume that Microsoft has to build them first, but these servers will be located at Microsofts Azure Datacenters, which already exist and are being built anyway, they are not bulding a Xbox only Datacenter.
By Sorto on 10.09.18 5:38am