Like so many other industries, companies are looking at streaming to be a big part of the video game landscape. Sony has been doing it for awhile with PS Now, and Google tried to make big headway with their Stadia service. Microsoft is also making a big play with their Xbox Cloud Gaming, or xCloud as some are still referring to it, as well. It’s already launched on Android devices, for instance, and the plan is to bring it to PC and consoles eventually. But it seems the plans could be even farther reaching.
In an interview with Stratechery, Spencer spoke about the future of Microsoft’s streaming plans. When asked if we could eventually see something for Xbox Cloud Gaming such as the small streaming sticks for your TV that have come from Roku and Amazon Fire, he said that it’s possible and that lower cost hardware is being considered.
“I think you’re going to see lower-priced hardware as part of our ecosystem when you think about streaming sticks and other things that somebody might want to just go plug into their TV and go play via xCloud. You could imagine us even having something that we just included in the Game Pass subscription that gave you an ability to stream xCloud games to your television and buying the controller.”
Cloud gaming has also been tied into Microsoft’s Game Pass service, which is also one of their key features moving forward. There are still a lot of challenges to game streaming that don’t exist for other mediums, however, such as things like data caps and slow internet. But either way, it seems Microsoft is dedicated to it for the time being.
