Here comes the first official confirmation of what we have known for some time already, that Microsoft is working on a new game streaming service. In fact, things are likely in the culmination stages already with an announcement to this effect expected during the ongoing E3 event.
As per the new scheme of things, Microsoft will be streaming games right from the cloud thereby saving players from having to maintain extensive native storage facilities. Also, another inherent benefit with the above service will be that it’s going to be compatible across all gaming consoles and platforms. As such, Microsoft will be able to cater to a much wider segment of the playing community than otherwise possible with the Xbox range of devices.
The above again would be akin to the Netflix model of doing business where any device with compatible hardware and a display will be fit enough for playing the games. Users will likely be charged a monthly subscription though it is anybody’s guess what that would likely be at the moment.
The head of Gaming division within Microsoft, Phil Spencer, however, stopped short of coming up with any specific dates for the launch of the above service. Spencer though confirmed their cloud engineers are working hard on the project and expect things to fructify soon enough. That again does not belittle the enormity of the task given the many intricacies involved in it.
The new service will be accessible via PC, tablets or even phones, apart from of course the dedicated game consoles, all of which again makes developing the service genuinely challenging.
Spencer meanwhile also shed some light on the company’s plans so far as gaming hardware is concerned. And that includes the new Xbox devices which are already being worked upon. Unfortunately, there is hardly anything available about the new consoles right now, except that those are going to better the best we have already seen so far.
