The head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, recently talked about cloud-based gaming with Gamespot. The focus of this discussion revolved around xCloud and how the service will fit in a traditionally console-based industry.
“It’s one of the directions the industry is headed. To me, it’s about what you as a gamer want to do. And I’m not trying to tell you that owning a box that plays video games is a bad thing or that somehow that’s not needed.”
“I think that the cloud inevitability as part of gaming is absolutely true. But we have more compute devices around us than we’ve ever had, whether it’s your phone, a Surface Hub, or an Xbox. The world where compute devices are gone and it’s all coming from the cloud just isn’t the world that we live in today.”
Cloud gaming and home consoles do not perform equally
By saying that “anybody should tell you that there’s no lag,” Spencer addressed the concerns about the experience on the cloud performing worst than the one on a console.
“Going back to our transparency, there’s a truth that I think is always important for us to talk about with our customers. In xCloud, we are building a convenience capability to allow you to take your Xbox experience with you. Meaning, that’s why we focus on the phone, and the experience is not the same as running the games on an Xbox One X. I’m not going to say that it’s an 8k 120 hertz thing. That’s not what we’re doing. We’re going to bring convenience and choice to you on your phone.”
Lastly, Spencer pointed out that shifting to new technologies takes time. Despite the service starts in 2019, in certain markets.
“I think this is years away from being a mainstream way people play. And I mean years, like years and years.”