Microsoft have been making a push in cloud gaming lately. Their cloud-based streaming service, currently called Project xCloud, promises to be a game-changer, at least in the long-term, if nothing else. With their third party support and the infrastructure they already have in place for it, Microsoft are confident that they can make xCloud a force to be reckoned with. The phrase “Netflix for gaming” has been thrown around, and as per Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, that’s very accurate.
Recently, while speaking to journalists at an invitational meeting at the Microsoft headquarters (via Business Insider), Nadella said that Microsoft aspires to make xCloud Netflix for gaming, once again re-iterating that their own back catalog of games, along with the foundation they already have in place, thanks to years of experience in the PC and console space, will empower them to achieve their lofty goals.
“We describe it as, shorthand, ‘Netflix for games’,” said Nadella. “We have as much a shot to build a subscription service as anybody else.”
“We have a huge back catalog, which is we have our own games,” he continued, before adding- “We have a structural position in that we have both a console business as well as a PC business, which happens to be bigger than the console business when it comes to gaming.”
xCloud definitely has a lot of potential, and though there are obviously doubts about any cloud-based service, thanks to usual skepticisms about things such as latency and stability, Microsoft definitely seems to have a great deal of confidence in what it’s setting out to do. With public trials beginning some time this year, we’re bound to find out for ourselves just how successful they are with that soon enough.
