Microsoft has announced that its cloud gaming initiative, Project xCloud, will formally arrive for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers on September 15th. The initiative will be available as a beta and include over 100 titles that can be played on an Android phone or tablet. Microsoft will also work with companies like Razer, Nacon, PowerA and 8BitDo for specific cloud gaming accessories.

Such accessories include travel controllers to Xbox controllers that can be attached to the sides of the phone (which sounds vaguely JoyCon-esque). A regular Xbox One Bluetooth Wireless controller and PS4 DualShock 4 controller will also be supported. Playable titles include a bunch of Xbox One exclusives along with third-party games like Yakuza Kiwami 2, Destiny 2 and F1 2019. The full list of games will be revealed at launch.

The caveat is that cloud gaming will only be available in 22 markets at launch. These include the United States, United Kingdom, South Korea, Portugal, Norway, Poland, Ireland, Italy, France, Denmark, Austria, Netherlands, Germany and so on. Microsoft will expand the number of markets over time though.

Those who are still part of Xbox Game Preview program for Project xCloud can access it until September 11th. Stay tuned for more details in the coming weeks.

Microsoft was one of the big players to pull out of GDC 2020 before the conference’s official postponement to Summer. However, it still has new details to share on past projects and what’s coming next. As part of Game Stack Live, there will be two Mixer livestreams on March 17th and 18th starting at 10 AM PT to share content originally meant for GDC.

The livestream on March 17th includes topics like “How The Coalition built Gears 5 to be more accessible” and “Maximizing impact and reach for your independent games with the ID@Xbox team.” It’s the March 18th livestream that should prove more interesting. One panel will talk about how Xbox Series X and Project xCloud equal a “New Chapter in Gaming”.

There will also be a panel on new features of DirectX including Raytracing (which the Xbox Series X supports), mesh shading and more. While there may not be any ground-breaking new details on the console – such as release date, price or major reveals – it could still be worth tuning in for the technical side of things. Stay tuned for more details next week.

Microsoft’s cloud streaming service Project xCloud is growing. The company announced that the preview, which is currently free, now supports 50 games including Forza Horizon 4, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Halo Wars 2 and much more (see the full list here). It also confirmed that xCloud will be launching sometime in 2020 for PC.

Some other interesting new details include support for DualShock 4 controllers, ensuring that even PS4 players have a chance to try out the service. The plan for xCloud is to integrate it with Xbox Game Pass down the line. Pricing has yet to be discussed but there’s still time for that.

Project xCloud’s public preview launched in October and only offered five games at the time (Halo 5: Guardians, Gears 5, Sea of Thieves and Killer Instinct). Seeing the service expand so much in terms of game selection is a good sign. It should also be a slightly worrying sign for Google Stadia which launches next week and only offers 12 games to stream at launch. More games are planned before the year is up though so stay tuned.

Microsoft’s game streaming service Project xCloud will begin its first public preview in October. Sign-ups are currently live but it will be limited to the United States, United Kingdom and Korea. Available games include Halo 5: Guardians, Gears 5, Sea of Thieves and Killer Instinct.

The service will grow and update over time though initially, you’ll need an Android phone or tablet to access it. An Xbox One controller is also required, of course. Being able to stream games from one’s console is also part of the plan though it will likely take some time before players can access the over 3,500 Xbox One games available.

As you’d expect, you can play on your Xbox One and continue game progress on your phone with the power of xCloud. With Google Stadia launching in November, Microsoft is looking to get ahead of the curve with xCloud. Stay tuned for more details from the current Inside Xbox stream.

Project Scarlett Launches in Holiday 2020

Microsoft finally confirmed that its next Xbox would be out in Holiday 2020. Project Scarlett, as it’s currently being referred to as, utilizes a custom processor which leverages the Zen 2 and Navi Technology from AMD. Four times more powerful than the Xbox One X and featuring GDDR6 memory for better performance overall, Project Scarlett will push the frame rate to 120 fps. That’s along with 8K resolution support, variable refresh rate and more. Next-gen ray tracing, in real time and hardware accelerated, is also promised. Microsoft also revealed that it’s using the SSD as virtual RAM to gain performance improvements in the region of around 40 times compared to the current generation. Four generations of gaming content, hinting at backwards compatibility for all previous Xbox consoles, also seems to be a given.

Halo Infinite Launching With Project Scarlett

Master Chief has finally returned, back from the dead, yet again (is this like the fourth time counting? We’re not sure). Rescued and ushered onto a ship, we’re shown the current state of the universe – the infamous Halo ring is still around and humanity or perhaps the UNSC have lost everything. What seems to be an enemy attacks the ship and good ol’ Chief rushes off to fight it. There wasn’t much else, except for a bit with Cortana’s voice, but Halo Infinite is out in Holiday 2020 and will launch with Xbox Scarlett. So that’s something.

Gears 5 Releases in September, New Escape Mode Revealed

The Coalition’s Gears 5 will be releasing on September 10^th (four days earlier if you own Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or the Ultimate Edition). More details on PvP and Horde are coming later but for now, we got to see a trailer that showcased protagonist Kate Diaz mentally torn in various directions. The Coalition also announced Escape Mode, a three player co-op mode where teams must coordinate to escape from swarms of enemies. You can even challenge other players to Escape missions and compete in the leaderboards.

Cyberpunk 2077 Out in April 2020, A Wild Keanu Reeves Appears

Look, say what you want but CD Projekt RED had the coolest reveal of the show with Cyberpunk 2077. We witnessed a cinematic trailer which seems to indicate the weight of different choices. By the end, Keanu Reeves appeared, telling the player that they “had a city to burn.” If that wasn’t enough, it was announced that Cyberpunk 2077 would be releasing on April 16^th 2020. You had more than our curiosity, CD Projekt RED – now you have our utmost attention (and possible preorders).

FromSoftware’s Elden Ring is Something (And Looks Cool)

Leaked prior to E3 2019, Elden Ring is being developed by FromSoftware with a world created by Hidetaka Miyazaki of Dark Souls fame and George R.R. Martin, the writer of Game of Thrones. None of those leaks could prepare us for the trailer though which features a lone person hammering something, disembodied limbs and warnings of the skies burning. No further details were provided. It’s almost like Miyazaki was exchanging notes with Kojima before the reveal.

Double Fine Productions Joins Xbox Game Studios

Is Double Fine Productions of Broken Age, RAD and Psychonauts 2 fame working on the next Halo or Forza? Thankfully, no but it is the latest studio to be acquired by Microsoft and join the Xbox Game Studios family. Tim Schafer was on hand to present new gameplay footage of Psychonauts 2, which is out later this year, and it looks to capture that perfect mix of creepy and quirky that the original embodied. No release date, sadly, but it’s worth looking forward to.

Ninja Theory Announces Bleeding Edge

Sure, this was probably one of the more underwhelming reveals of E3 2019 but that’s only because it was leaked beforehand. Ninja Theory’s Bleeding Edge is a 4v4 multiplayer brawler with different characters to choose from, a variety of weapons and sick environmental kills. It looks fine in its current state but the feel of the combat and other gameplay details still need to be expanded on. There’s a technical alpha test on June 27^th so hopefully we’ll get our answers then.

Ori and The Will of the Wisps Out in February 2020

How can Moon Studios make Ori and The Will of the Wisps look better and better with each subsequent reveal? We don’t know but this trailer, complete with a nasty giant spider and gorgeous-looking environments, finally decided to give us a release date. Ori and the Will of the Wisps releases on February 11^th 2020 for Xbox One and PC and while it’s skipping this year, all that extra polish should make it worth the wait.

Project xCloud Launching in October

Microsoft already revealed that its own personal cloud-streaming service Project xCloud would allow for streaming Xbox One titles onto various devices. That’s pretty significant in and of itself, especially with over 3500 games currently available for the console. However, at E3 2019, the company revealed that Project xCloud would allow for streaming from your game console to various devices as well, providing a remote play option in the process. Other details, like price, have yet to be revealed but it’s out in October.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is Now Available

Xbox Game Pass launched for PC prior to the Xbox E3 presser and we received further confirmation that titles like Gears 5 and Halo: The Master Chief Collection would be on it. At the presser, however, the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate offer was revealed and made available. For $14.99 per month, you get Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass for PC. An introductory offer of $1 per month further sweetens the deal.

Among the many games and services that Microsoft showcased at E3 2019 was Project xCloud. Not much has been known about the streaming service till now but it will allow players to stream Xbox games onto their devices. It releases in October, which is well before the launch of Project Scarlett.

Project xCloud will look to support every Xbox One title currently available, providing over 3,500 games to play on different devices. And… that’s more or less all we know at this point. How it will integrate with Project Scarlett (if at all), the streaming-focused console that was apparently supposed to be announced, and so on, is all still up in the air.

How much will Project xCloud cost, especially with Google Stadia retailing for $9.99 per month with Stadia Pro? Time will tell, but at the very least, Microsoft has a huge library of games to leverage compared to Stadia. Stay tuned for more impressions and details from E3 2019.

Google announcing their streaming service, Stadia has had interesting implications for the future of gaming, but there’s also been a lot of doubts and skepticism about the ability of the service to deliver as promised. That has mostly been fueled by the lack of significant demoing (despite reports that the demos they did have were real and that the platform will work fine). One such skeptic seems to be Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer Mike Nichols, who cast doubts on Google’s ability to deliver the content to drive Stadia to success when he did an interview with The Telegraph.

While he doesn’t doubt Google has the infrastructure to pull off Stadia, he just doesn’t believe they’ll be able to get the content to be able to compete. “Emerging competitors like Google have a cloud infrastructure, a community with YouTube, but they don’t have the content,” said Nichols.

He also emphasized that he believes Microsoft’s Project xCloud, with the company’s prior experience of a dedicated processing machine like an Xbox or a PC, will be preferable to an anywhere and everywhere approach. He said: “You won’t necessarily need a device over time, but you’ll get the best experience with local processing power.”

It remains to be seen how either service will fare, but there is no doubt that streaming is a big part of the future of gaming- however far off that future may be is something that is anyone’s best guess for now.

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.

Microsoft’s Project xCloud is one of several gaming initiatives meant to try and tap into streaming as a delivery mechanism for video games, and their consumption. Streaming, of course, is something that has been tried for games before, but always failed to take off, due to the fundamental issues of latency and bandwidth limitations involved.

With xCloud, however, Microsoft feels it has something that can help benefit the entire industry, empower it even, by helping to deliver immersive games to everyone, regardless of where they are.

“The future of gaming is the ability to play the games you want, with the people you want, whenever you want, wherever you are, and on any device,” Xbox boss Phil Spencer said in an interview with GamesIndustry. “Project xCloud is about providing more access and choice to gamers. For mobile-only players, it creates access to more immersive games that they haven’t had access to before. For console and PC players, it creates new choice in when and where they can play. And, for developers, it means the opportunity to create one game that has the potential to scale to billions of players. We’re building a set of tools and technologies that we believe can empower the entire industry.”

The problem is, streaming has fundamental issues inherent to what it is—it can work for less demanding games, but anything that needs rapid response times, like a shooter, will suffer severely from the latency and lag involved. Whether or not Microsoft’s offering will be good enough to help bypass this problem for the masses remains to be seen.

Microsoft announced xCloud, their cloud streaming service, earlier this year. Cloud gaming in general seems to be becoming a hotly contested market, with Google having thrown its hat in the ring as well, but even as more and more major players seem to be subscribing to cloud streamed games as the next big thing, there is a lot of wariness among the actual players regarding these initiatives.

The caution is well founded—in the past, streaming services have simply failed to deliver on their promise, owing to the inherent challenges of latency and compression artefacts for video quality, and it’s unclear how these new services will be any different in that regard.

However, speaking to investors in Microsoft’s financial call, CEO Satya Nadella stated that the company’s aspiration is to provide, with xCloud, a service that delivers the same quality as playing locally on your console or PC might.

“We’re… building a robust cloud platform so that anyone can play the games they want with the people they want at any time and place, and most importantly, on any device,” he said.

“Earlier this year, we announced Project xCloud, our future streaming gaming platform with the goal of delivering a quality experience for all gamers on all devices. We’re building a service that’s consistent with the speed and high fidelity that gamers expect on their PCs and their consoles.”

Again, as I said, there is a warranted amount of skepticism surrounding his words. Nonetheless, Microsoft is one of the few companies that is actually well equipped to handle the challenges in this arena, so I am eager to see where they go with this in the future.