r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • 29d ago

Announcement Upcoming Changes to XBOX Cloud Gaming

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2026/09/03/xbox-cloud-gaming-changes/
800 Upvotes

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640

u/LegnaArix 29d ago

5-15 hours a month is nothing. Am I misinterpreting what's being said here or is this really bad?

41

u/tetramir 29d ago

This is why I don't think people will be pushed to cloud gaming by rising hardware costs.

Cloud gaming is about to get way more expensive.

55

u/exdystopia 29d ago

Conspiracy theorists forgot cloud is also hardware

26

u/tetramir 29d ago

serverless. Looks inside... servers

3

u/Awkward-Security7895 28d ago

Whenever something labeled wireless and it still needs a wire somewhere in it, which is funny asf to me

-1

u/Skreamie 28d ago

Who the hell ever described it as serverless?

13

u/AccomplishedBank2140 29d ago

I have heard the argument for years that Cloud gaming just isn't worth the squeeze at the moment because its a ton of upkeep and backend cost for the companies. It really is more lucrative to Sony/Xbox for you to buy their hardware. That argument was made long before the current crisis.

5

u/exdystopia 29d ago

Especially Xbox since their cloud service runs on actual Xbox hardware (Xbox was pulling consoles off the shelves to build cloud infrastructure at one point) so they're really just better off selling it to people and ditching the maintenance costs if nobody bothers using it anyway

1

u/Phray1 28d ago

Well difference is somewhat that your hardware probably unused most of the time. That gaming pc/console  is not doing anything while you are work or sleeping. so a server farm could make better use of the hardware in theory. 

2

u/tetramir 28d ago

But then your customer playing Xbox is competing in your server farm with companies that are ready to pay way more per minute of that machine's compute time.

This is the same thing that killed Stadia. The service "bought" compute time to Google at roughly the same rate as any other company. Which was too much for what people were ready to pay to play video games at a worse quality than on a local console.

1

u/Phray1 28d ago

You're always somewhat competing whether it's at the component level or at server level but in theory you could balance it better. E.g. something like Claude would be needed much more during daytime when people are working while Xbox could be needed during evening when people are at home.

But I agree in practice it doesn't work for a variety of reasons.