When it comes to streaming as part of the future of the gaming industry, the thing everyone is talking about right now is Google’s upcoming service, Stadia. But they aren’t the only ones in the game, as Microsoft is working on their own streaming service, xCloud. The focus at their E3 was mostly on the Xbox brand, as well as the Game Pass service, but xCloud is coming along too, and it’s got some huge promise.
At E3, xCloud General Manager Kevin LaChapelle spoke in an interview with Gamereactor. In it he talked up the service and promised that using xCloud was going to be like having portable Xbox with you, which is something Microsoft have suggested before, and that it won’t require the best of the best internet to run. He said that if a game can run on an Xbox One, it can run on xCloud.
“Our hardware is a 100% compatible with the Xbox One system, so if the game can run in the Xbox One it can run in the Xbox servers,” he said. “What we show you today, you need roughly 10 Mb of bandwidth so any… and it will run on 4G, it will run on WiFi. And so in the theater, we worked very hard to make sure that we have a very clean wireless signal for us and we had the ability to go hardwired in case the wireless spectrum gets challenging.”
xCloud is said to be launching in October, though overall it’s been somewhat muted compared to Google’s push of Stadia. Interesting times ahead, no doubt, for the industry.