Microsoft announced it would be having its first Project xCloud game streaming public trials later this year.
Microsoft announced it would be having its first Project xCloud game streaming public trials later this year. The news was revealed during the weekly Inside Xbox show on YouTube and Mixer alongside a demo which appeared to have racing game Forza Horizon 4 running on an Android smartphone. However this Project xCloud demo looked staged what with the player’s button presses not even coming to close to matching the car’s movement on the screen. The timing of this announcement is interesting when you consider Google is slated to reveal its own streaming service plans at the Game Developers Conference 2019 next week. Perhaps Microsoft hastily made this announcement about its game streaming service as a way of preempting whatever the Mountain View company has in store for us.
« Back in October we formally unveiled our work on Project xCloud: a vision for game-streaming technology that will complement our console hardware and give gamers more choices in how and where they play, » claims Project xCloud boss Kareem Choudhry in a post on the official Xbox site. « Since then, we’ve been heads down and hard at work, preparing to launch the first public trials later this year. At the same time, we wanted to stay transparent about our progress and chat with the Inside Xbox team, showing you the first public demo of the technology in action. »
Furthermore, Choudhry goes on to suggest that xCloud won’t cannibalise the Xbox family of consoles.
« We’re developing Project xCloud not as a replacement for game consoles, but as a way to provide the same choice and versatility that lovers of music and video enjoy today, » his post reads. « We’re adding more ways to play Xbox games. We love what’s possible when a console is connected to a 4K TV with full HDR support and surround sound – that remains a fantastic way to experience console gaming. We also believe in empowering gamers to decide when and how to play. »
That said, his statements are at odds with his own comments made in a recent interview.
“We know we aren’t going to sell two billion consoles, and there are a lot of markets around the world where a console is not necessarily part of the lifestyle,” said Choudhry in an interview earlier this month.
