Cloud Gaming Is Changing Everything
According to Microsoft’s GM of Cloud Gaming James Gwertzman, the infrastructure being laid today is bound to create more opportunities in the future. Content creation and distribution will become more seamless and cloud gaming will allow developers to go beyond what was possible before. Microsoft’s Project xCloud is the beginning of this process and it’s available through an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription which brings the Game Pass lineup to mobile through the cloud.
“We have a number of ‘industry priority scenarios.’ It doesn’t roll off the tongue, but they’re things that we think the industry really cares about today that may be pain points that we’re trying to help with. The first one on our list of five is to accelerate game production with the cloud,” said James Gwertzman. “This act of content creation, once you have it in the cloud, distribution becomes more fluid. We see this with xCloud. It started out as just racking Xboxes in datacenters and streaming it.”
“Now we’re getting more experience with it, and you may be able to build game experiences that would not be possible without running in the cloud. Games where you can have lots of players in a single environment interacting in new ways. xCloud was about putting Xboxes in the cloud *laugh* but the broader term is pixel streaming, where you’re running GPUs in the cloud and streaming it down.”
“Initially pixel streaming is going to be useful in non-gaming scenarios like architecture or retail where you want a 3D experience but you don’t have to have the hardware. That will then move into gaming and you’ll see developers leveraging experiences that go beyond what was possible before.”
Are you looking forward to seeing how cloud technology improves the development of future games or are you excited to see what new experiences developers can create using the technology? Let us know in the comments below!