Oof.
You havenât had debates about it. Youâve had weird rants blaming everything on Bond and cobbling together different assumptions to do so. Case in point. Azure is a very successful business thatâs so successful it is recorded and reported by Microsoft completely separate from gaming. I remember those conversations. Everytime you bring it up I have no idea what youâre on. Even gaming related services that use Azure will be reported under Azure and Azure profits and growth arenât credited under Xbox. If it were Xbox would have like the biggest gaming business in the world. Xbox Cloud Gaming is still completely tied to game pass as a perk and only very very recently has a free ad version been in testing. The statement is Xbox justifying devaluing a perk included with game pass and hoping it doesnât impact the profit & revenue that service brings in. It remains to be seen if that will be the case. It remains to be seen what this means for cloud gaming in general. Game Pass subscriptions have clearly stalled and thereâs not been anything they could do to push those up like they wanted, but the overall hours users have put into cloud gaming have been consistently reported by Microsoft to be positively rising. It was one of their big bragging points. One could just as easily take this information and say that Xbox is now focused on monetizing cloud gaming directly. To do so they need to decouple it from the existing GP subscriptions to some extent. Theyâve already said there will be ways to pay for cloud gaming hours. In other words where cloud gaming was initially a perk to try and bolster Game Pass subs, now itâs going to be a direct product that people pay for. And Iâm not sure how we got back on âThis an Xboxâ when you say they should focus on Console and PC and MOST of the this is an Xbox campaign was centered around pushing Xbox on PC. The ROG Xbox Ally and other handheld PCs were practically the center piece. The goal was to expand the common knowledge of what the Xbox ecosystem encompasses in general, and the major focus was both PC and cloud gaming. It wasnât a cloud thing. It pushed Xbox Play Anywhere and Windows gaming as well.
So in order
- Cloud Gaming has never existed stand alone at Xbox. All we can do is muse about how much it drove people to sign up for GPU (up until last year when it got added to lower tiers). All weâve learned now is that most ultimate subscribers donât play entire AAA games monthly on the cloud and that Xbox wants to start directly monetizing cloud gaming. If anything that suggests they have data where cloud gaming is more profitable to them as a stand alone paid service than a free perk for game pass.
- Azure isnât gaming. I donât even see why Microsoft would randomly report gaming related Azure services under Xbox profits. Iâm still so confused by what youâre even alluding to there. Please explain.
- This is an Xbox campaign wasnât fixated on cloud, it was about expanding peopleâs perception on what the Xbox ecosystem is. As in it was about PC. It was a LOT about PC. Many of the ads were PC focused and they used the ROG Xbox Ally for a lot of the campaign.
You didnât have debates about this stuff. You did a lot of finger pointing through a spider web of different assumptions and points that contradicted themselves. People respond, at least I do, out of a need to untangle it. Like just here. Youâve gone from âPeople told me cloud replaced consolesâ to âpeople said cloud was a reason for growthâ (already two completely different things) based on the fact that Xbox is now monetizing cloud MORE (and more directly) with the justification that less than 4% spend more than 15 hours cloud gaming monthly. Then you jump to how Azure is apparently what Microsoft means when they talk about Cloud Gaming growth in the gaming section of their earnings calls, and then how âThis is an Xbox campaignâ was terrible because it focused on cloud and not console and PC completely ignoring the fact that PC was a huge part of it.
Iâm frustrated at this situation because it looks like Xbox will be taking away existing value from Game Pass because they think they can justify charging me more for what I once got for me. If Xbox thought they couldnât make more money off of cloud gaming then they wouldnât bother doing this. Theyâd have let go on as is or cut the service entirely. However, I see the 4% as a failure on Xboxâs part to market what game pass offers. We know subscriptions slowed a lot following COVID and the vast majority are Xbox console users. Xbox on PC and Cloud still remains far too obscure. Xbox is seeing that people arenât aware of all the benefits their service offers and because of that Game Pass is failing to reach new subscribers like it could. Microsoftâs solution is to start charging existing subscribers more for benefits that were once free. Itâs a shame that the âthis is an Xboxâ campaign did fail because we desperately need new customers in the ecosystem. Without them all Xbox will keep doing is raising prices and charging more for benefits or just straight up downsizing. How do you feel about the situation? Thatâs a genuine question because itâs hard to know when weâre somehow playing the blame game laser focused on Sarah Bond, back on the âthis is an Xbox campaignâ, and bringing up Azure. Are you happy that theyâre limited cloud gaming hours? Do you want them to get rid of cloud gaming entirely and think that will⌠do something positive? Iâd love to talk about it, but lord am I not going back and forth on how Sarah Bond is to blame for eggs being expensive or what the campaign entailed or some conspiracy about how Microsoft lies on the earnings reports.
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Every day I question more and more if GPU will have day one games in say five years. We can call cloud gaming a free perk, but thatâs âa free perkâ thatâs been attached to Game Pass Ultimate since 2020. A benefit of six years being this heavily cracked down on isnât great for my optimism. Xbox is clearly intent on making that extra squeeze scratch for Microsoft.
Iâve just received a mail from XBOX specifically about Cloud gaming, saying that thereâs no changes to my current subscription in my region, that itâs relative to new purchases.
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The few markets with consumer protections are nice, sadly the US is not one.
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OhâŚshit. Yeah, thatâs why they have been so fast to send that e-mail. Itâs written like some blog post, itâs kind of weird.
Whatâs meant to be powering âThis Is An XBoxâ in all mobiles, TVs, Xbox hardware or cloud? And I very much doubt, the Master Race use cloud gaming rather than their high en GPUâs for their gaming needs
Letâs face facts: most gamers donât want or use Cloud gaming (we all know it). This move will mean the few who do use Xbox Cloud for all their gaming will use it even less
I think some XBOX fans, in an effort to make Microsoft look great, talked up Game Pass profits and Xbox Cloud gaming growth a little too much
Iâve no doubt cloud gaming is the future, but itâs decades away. Now just get back to selling your own console and making great games on it and the PC and look after the core game, not try and chase the Tiktok userâŚ
A lot of phones today can play a number of games natively, so they donât necessarily need to be cloud powered also there is a place for TVs that come with built tech to play games. Some android tv do play certain games natively. Heck todayâs phones can play X360 games natively.
Nvidia GeForce now has over 25 million subs so I would say people are interested in cloud as long as it works well and probably standalone. I do agree though less will use it on Xbox. I just think right now the cloud gaming audience are separate from the console ones but their is a large casual audience available for cloud.
Microsoft is the one who talked both up and before Asha Satya was always putting it up as the growing and bright spot of Xbox. I think even last year they said something about being about 18% margins in growth.
Maybe cloud gaming is the future maybe it isnât. However, decades from now I think every device could be capable of native gaming.
Yes, a lot of phones can play games natively; none use Xbox hardware for that feature, same for TVs so donât come it on that one
Whereâs the actual growth in Xbox Cloud gaming? Too many people use the growth of cloud from Microsoft Azure cloud and not Xbox Cloud
Letâs face it, most real gamers want hardware and not cloud. You know it & I know it. 40 years time that will be different, mind LOL
No one with a brain is confusing Azure cloud growth with Xbox cloud growth, one is primarily a corporate offering and the other consumer (even if like most Microsoft services it shares the data centres)âŚ
Not share it, Xbox pays for Azure, which brings up the question: If 15 hours is the max they can give before breaking even, why not try to go to Amazon or Google for a better deal?
Because Xbox Cloud Streaming runs on Xbox Series X server blades. AWS or Google cannot run your Xbox games.
Theyâre working on PCBC, so that likely wonât be true in the future.
Edit: Also Play Anywhere versions of Game Pass and Stream youâre own games could probably be used currently.
What exactly is Xbox hardware? Do you need Xbox hardware for the Xbox app. You donât need Xbox hardware for phones and so on if it is native. You just need a store app. There are some phones today that are geared more towards gaming like the Redmagic phones, and it would have been nice to see Microsoft move in this direction as they might have been able to push native gaming on phones and handhelds harder than itâs been. Youâd have to ask Microsoft as all I said was the cloud touting was by them. I referred to Nvidia Geforce Now having more than 25 million subs as interest in the cloud gaming market. Obviously, the cost and hardware limit is a barrier. I donât know anyone using Microsoft Azure as Xbox cloud growth substitution.
Yes, gamers want hardware but even cloud is hardware though I get it native is what is preferred.
Almost feels like MS wants to make xcloud less interesting, make sure all Xbox games from the past work on PC, and then let other cloud providers be stuck with the burden of figuring out how to make financially viable while MS enjoys only having to provide the games through Gamepass.
I basically expect cloud gaming to just die. Because Google bounced, Amazon seems pretty much done with Luna, Netflix is pulling back from it, Sony doesnât want to do anything with it. The smaller providers that Xbox made deals with lost a large catalog with this move, and Nvidia also lost access since they had a deal.
Nvidia also meeds to make over 670 million dollars in revenue for fisval year 2028(starts 2027), so if game streaming isnât making enough money I can see them stop supporting it. Which likely isnât as they have fold money made in gaming with other higher margin stuff.
Edit: which is funny, because the AI push was likely pushing everyone towards not owning their hardware. But itâs now taking over everything else and killing cloud gaming.
Some did and I had this debate when people used the growth of cloud for Microsoft profits, when it was clearly on the Azure side and not the Xbox Cloud side
At the end of the day people who love video games want console or PC hardware and are not interested in using the cloud. The TikTok mobile phone gen is not interested in Xbox Cloud gaming; itâs a niche market and Xboxâs own data backs it up, just 4% we be affected tells you all you need to know.
Sure, in a couple of decades, weâll all be on the Cloud, but gamers want hardware and itâs nice to see XBOX getting back to pushing consoles and PC gaming; hopefully weâll get a handheld to go along with Helix too
XBOX is really getting back into good shape and I canât wait for their new hardware next year.
cloud gaming works very well when you have a good connection, but like you said, AI has killed cloud gaming. Hardware is so expensive right now that the modest revenues from cloud gaming cannot be profitable, which means you cannot scale your business ac cordingly and so the only way theyâll be able to make it financially viable is probably to stop any growth they had in their xcloud initiative and charge per hour to monetize the cloud âwhalesâ even more I guess as to extract as much out of it as they can until the mid 2030s when the RAMpocalypse hopefully dies lol
I know Iâve upgraded my PCs myself last year and Iâll be stretching their lifespans until at least 2030, if not a bit more, before I upgrade them. So if I feel the burn from the expensive components, Iâm guessing datacenters are feeling it too!
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Well, this is going to drop the value of Gamepass even more. At this point Gamepass ultimate should be 15 bucks or less but I doubt they would decrease the price.
I donât think Iâve ever used more than 15 hours in a month, to be honest Iâd use remote play but I preferred using xcloud over wasting more electricity at home with my Xbox in standby mode.
Like you, I doubt theyâll drop the price. Probably hasnât even crossed their mind!
The cloud gaming aspect though is more of an extra though, but if your competition is doing it, then I think you need to at least be able to match it.