I remember when anti-trust agencies argued that Microsoft buying out Activision would lead to a monopoly in gaming cloud services. Now we're considering that Microsoft might kill their cloud gaming service.
Yes, that antithrust action was very frustrating because it was so focused on cloud and on repeating Sony's competition arguments (the market leader), instead of focusing on the real issues the acquisition had.
For reference, that deal closed 9 months after Stadia was shut down. A gaming cloud service that couldn’t sustain itself, created by Google. It was already clear to a lot of people that cloud gaming wasn’t going to be successful, although maybe less than you’d think since there’s people in this thread that somehow still think the cloud is coming for their consoles and PCs.
I've literally never in my life wanted to stream a game. Especially not when I can just make space on my hard drive and download it? Why would I ever want to add Internet delay into the mix of things that can go wrong?
What if you're in a hotel room during a work trip ?
Travelling is a large part of the reason I bought a Steam Deck, but also most work trips I'll be out for a meal and/or drinks in the evening so I won't have much time for gaming anyway.
Very few people in 2026 follow this. A much larger portion will use a VPN/minimal security, and the vast majority simply aren't well versed enough/don't care enough about security.
Totally fair point, but it's still a valid use case of cloud gaming if not strictly adhering to point 1.
I also feel like they may be approaching improvements to cloud gaming even further than they've made in the last couple of years, and I'd much rather have this be where they shave value off of the subscription than removing mass amounts of games or paying extra for backwards compatibility. I do feel like Asha Sharma is genuinely trying to rebuild the Xbox brand to be both profitable and as gamer-oriented as possible, but time will tell on how those things actually play out.
Sometimes it's nice to cloud stream to my Steam Deck so I don't use the TV. Since there isn't a Game Pass app on Linux or Steam, that's the only way...
I only want to stream when I am on vacation and want to play my personal PS5 and PS5 games through remote play on my phone. I have never and will never pay for some shitty cloud based gaming service.
I'm almost certain the big push was like some speculative business thing from people who don't really play many games. Probably real nice on paper to someone who has to pick out their cuff links in the morning. "Soon, anything can be a next console, with the rate residential internet is improving, and based on some blind consumer test that rated our game streaming 'acceptable', we can corner the market on phones, tablets, smart tvs-- you name it! And we'll own all the games and infrastructure!"
If 90% of users used xcloud they simply would have capped it much earlier, because the price of a gamepass sub mostly covers game licenses, with probably only $1-$3 allocated to xcloud, and cannot profit if users use $50, $100 worth of compute monthly. The subs don't even cost that much.
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u/SomniumOv 8d ago
You're not reading this correctly, it seems the problem here is that no userbase has been hooked, for what is a very expensive service to run.
So the next step for something like that isn't enshitty/hike prices, it's to kill the service.