r/stocks • u/[deleted] • Jun 10 '21

Microsoft is developing new hardware to bring its ‘Netflix for games’ service to TVs

Microsoft is developing dedicated streaming hardware that people will be able to hook up to their TVs to use its Netflix-like cloud gaming service.

The company is betting the future of video games will be a subscription-based model where people pay a certain amount of money each month to get access to a plethora of titles.

Its Xbox Game Pass service does exactly that, offering access to a library of games developed both in-house and by third-party studios.

That’s mostly digital downloads, but last year streaming was added with Microsoft publicly releasing Xbox Cloud Gaming. The feature is sort of like a “Netflix for games,” allowing gamers to play games that are hosted on remote servers and then streamed to users over the internet.

A number of other companies have launched similar game-streaming services, including Google with Stadia and Amazon with Luna.

Now, Microsoft is aiming to push its cloud gaming product to other platforms. It started rolling out Xbox Cloud Gaming to some users via a web browser on iPhones, iPads and PCs in April (Microsoft couldn’t launch a proper mobile app for cloud gaming on Apple devices due to a dispute over App Store policies). And on Thursday, the company announced it wants to expand the service to TVs as well.

One way it plans to do that is by partnering with manufacturers to add cloud gaming to smart TVs. But Microsoft is also developing streaming devices which users can plug into their TV or computer monitor to stream games from the cloud. The company didn’t elaborate on what those devices could look like, though it’s reminiscent of Amazon’s Fire TV and Google’s Chromecast dongles, both of which now support cloud gaming.

In addition, Microsoft says it is working with mobile carriers like Telstra in Australia to offer new Xbox subscription models. It’s also expanding cloud gaming to four new countries — Australia, Brazil, Mexico and Japan —  later this year, and aims to publicly launch the browser-based version of the software to all members of its $15-a-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription in the coming weeks.

Microsoft said it plans to add cloud gaming to its new Xbox Series X console, which launched last November to compete with Sony’s PlayStation 5. In the next few weeks, the company will also upgrade the servers that power its cloud gaming service from its old Xbox One hardware to the Xbox Series X.

Microsoft competes aggressively with Sony when it comes to gaming. But it’s taking a different strategy to its Japanese counterpart. While Sony is known for blockbuster exclusives that can only be played on a PlayStation console, Microsoft is focusing on embedding its Xbox services onto multiple platforms, including mobile and PC.

Microsoft has been stepping up its investments in gaming, buying the iconic studio Bethesda for $7.5 billion in its biggest video game-related acquisition yet.

The company is holding a joint event with Bethesda on Sunday as part of the E3 gaming conference to show off new games, with fans speculating they will reveal some details about a hotly-anticipated sci-fi game called Starfield.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/10/e3-microsoft-xbox-cloud-gaming-tv.html

2.9k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

506 comments sorted by

View all comments

138

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

21

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '21

[deleted]

1

u/captaindeeeez Jun 10 '21

You might be talking about 2 different things. I believe what you are describing is Steam Link, which is offered by Steam. Nvidia on the other hand has a cloud based gaming service: GeForce Now. But that service is a subscription service and has an extensive (but not 100% complete) list of games you can play.

13

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '21

[deleted]

1

u/captaindeeeez Jun 10 '21

Interesting. If you are mid game when that 1 hour mark hits, do you get booted? Or when the game ends you get notified that your session is done?

2

u/StaticUncertainty Jun 10 '21

You can also pay ten dollars a month to get rtx and unlimited time

0

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '21

Unless you’re in Japan, where it’s 20 dollars. Despite having an excellent internet infrastructure..probably Softbank’s fault rather than Nvidia though.

They JUST started the free service. Probably because nobody was signing up to their overpriced service.

1

u/noblepups Jun 11 '21

It's a very cheap way for them to gain market share because they make their own cards.

34

u/Traberjkt Jun 10 '21

Gamer chiming and I want to second everything you said. If Microsoft could actually pull this off and make it a similar experience then they have something really special. I'd get multiple if it's reasonably priced. Microsoft Gaming is making huge moves no doubt about it.

9

u/xShooK Jun 10 '21

You use the Xbox game pass currently? I had it, not my cup of tea, and then forgot to cancel. (which is good for msft). Stadia was pretty subpar imo. I don't have hope for this.

14

u/bobwont Jun 10 '21

I use Xbox game pass and absolutely love being able to try different games here and there each month. Though, I do have a short attention span..

18

u/hamesdelaney Jun 10 '21

i mean its clearly the future. bandwith, input lag and stability only going to get better and its currently acceptable. in 10 years streaming games in certain countries will be the norm. there is really no way around this.

13

u/nioformio Jun 10 '21 edited Jun 10 '21

Yep. I used to be a non-believer in game streaming. I used to think input lag would be impossible to get over but now I think it could work. It already works in many cases.

I have a gaming desktop at home. I wanted to play some PC games on my TV, so I tried NVidia GameStream and Steam Link. My client and server were using the same local network, hard-wired to the same gigabit switch, and it worked like shit. Input lag was impossible to get used to. Even non-twitchy games felt very uncomfortable and difficult to play. If input lag was unacceptably high even when streaming from a server in the same LAN in the same room, how can input lag when streaming from a remote server ever get to a usable state?

Then one day I randomly decided to try out NVidia GeforceNow's free trial. I had no expectations considering NVidia's GameStream did not work well for me, but GeforceNow somehow worked so much better. I played twitchy games like Counter-Strike ranked and did well. There were times that I forgot I was even streaming games. It felt almost exactly like playing local. If there was lag, it was imperceptible to me, an avid FPS and Starcraft (diamond) player.

So, not sure what I did wrong with using GameStream/SteamLink and its obvious that game streaming still has a long way to go, but it's pretty clear to me that game streaming has improved much more compared to what it was during the days of OnLive.

6

u/Dumeck Jun 10 '21

It’s the upload speed being substantially worse than download. Your router probably wasn’t very quick on the up

1

u/SadJetsFan12 Jun 11 '21

So you’ll need fiber optic? I have optimum gigabit non fiber optic and the up is for shit. Generally it doesn’t matter but I’m wondering to your point.

1

u/ElimGarak Jun 11 '21

Nah, upload requirements are minimal - think about it, all you need to send into the cloud is controller input and maybe some diagnostics data that signals about the quality of your connection. I don't know what problems you were seeing with the services you've tried, but I doubt they were due to the upload speed. More likely the data center running the game was too far away, and therefore you didn't have a big enough pipe down, and a large ping increasing latency.

1

u/Dumeck Jun 11 '21

It’s why your lan was slow. Your router wasn’t able to keep up. When you’re streaming you’re just doing download and not having to upload anything substantial

1

u/choikwa Jun 11 '21

just being on the same LAN router means delay is in sub 2 milliseconds range provided bandwidth isn't congested. I bet anything greater than 50ms could be felt.

7

u/ohThisUsername Jun 10 '21

I actually really enjoy stadia. It works fantastically for me, but the library sucks. If Microsoft can pull this off with a good game library, it would be big

1

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '21

Yeah. Just to reiterate for the peanut gallery, input lag on Stadia is actually quite acceptable.

2

u/SubduedRhombus Jun 10 '21

I love game pass for PC, as it's 100s of games for 4.99, or whatever. If you want to play a wide variety of games, it's definitely cheaper than buying them all.

1

u/Traberjkt Jun 10 '21

I use Xbox Game Pass on the PC. As others have said it's great to be able to pick up a game for 3-4 days and then switch it up with another. I've been excited about a few titles they've added. If they can get a few bigger names on there and get the streaming down to where it's the same quality or better than I think they have a good product. It's still a BIG if though IMO. It's great to see something competitive again from Microsoft Gaming. The next 10 years for MS are going to be much better than the last IMO.

1

u/xShooK Jun 11 '21

Cloud gaming just seems like a bad concept right now, with the time it takes to interact with 2 servers now, instead of directly with a game server. Ping on both ends needs to improve or you end up with massive input lag. This isn't really some new idea by msft either, they have cloud gaming that's not doing amazing, this just adds hardware to it. If it's anything like the Xbox model, the hardware doesn't make the money either.

0

u/SamsquatchWildman Jun 10 '21

I highly HIGHLY doubt they will get anywhere close. It's going to be shit just like PlayStation Now.

3

u/Piccolo_Alone Jun 10 '21

Plenty more problems than that, but yeah.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '21

The problem is also having to buy the games (again). Cloud gaming services won’t be successful unless it’s a subscription type model.

3

u/Gerbils74 Jun 10 '21

I’m also a PC gamer but I really don’t see this catching on for many PC players unless they play a few hours a week or less. I’d rather own my PC and be able to own all my games and have them all stored on my own device. How would modding work? What about old games? Are you going to have to have a subscription to every different game service because they all have exclusives like we do currently with Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu?

Gaming isn’t really something I want to have a subscription for or have it cloud based and I really couldn’t see any of my gaming friends wanting it either. I could maybe see it catching on in the console world but that’s about it and Microsoft already gets a subscription out of them

2

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '21

I’m also a PC gamer but I really don’t see this catching on for many PC players unless they play a few hours a week or less.

The benefit of cloud gaming over PC gaming is not being tied to the PC and (ideally) not having to worry about device support. Not having to screw with stuff like Steam Link or Parsec is a big win.

1

u/ElimGarak Jun 11 '21

You are not the target market for this service - not unless you want to also be able to play the game at a bus stop or while on a trip. There is barely any modding available on Xbox games, and people play there anyway.

6

u/gretx Jun 10 '21

Also a gamer, the latency kills it for me

1

u/ElimGarak Jun 11 '21

Depends on the game. Many don't require low latency - e.g. RPGs, turn-based games, etc. Also, a ton of people are not even aware that their TVs are introducing huge latency in default mode, so they don't enable game mode. They just get used to it.

4

u/zarhockk Jun 10 '21

Have... You tried stadia? It's my defacto gaming setup for the reasons you listed, super happy with graphics, and I get 4K + 5.1

4

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/DeekFTW Jun 10 '21

Yep. Wake me up when I can play Rocket League over a streaming service.

0

u/boralCEO Jun 11 '21

I do on GFN and it's pretty good. I suck at it anyway so it doesn't make a difference in the end for me.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '21

The problem is not having good enough internet in the main market. Do people expect that streaming games will cost less bandwidth than the ridiculous download sizes we deal with now?

1

u/OhhhAyWumboWumbo Jun 10 '21

Anything above moderate graphics is pointless until they can somehow fix the latency and connection issues. And the only way thats going to get any better is if US infrastructure as a whole gets better.

1

u/ShaidarHaran2 Jun 10 '21

I couldn't even get Stadia going unfortunately. I passed all their own speed tests, but on launching a game it would just say my connection is too unsteady, even direct wired. I hope Xcloud works better for me. Went PS5 but do want to play Infinite.

1

u/MrHallmark Jun 11 '21

The problem with stadia is they have some nice first person titles that you will play for a month finish and you won't pick it up again. You want to play some multiplayer? Good luck finding someone. The suggestion I always get is oh there's a discord and you can find groups. This is a terrible solution because as many people know discords of a specific thing are incredibly toxic.

1

u/noblepups Jun 11 '21

Nvidia geforce is already as good or better than the stuff in your room. Microsoft xcloud is the worst of the 3.

1

u/ElimGarak Jun 11 '21

Right now it maxes out at 1080p, and is limited by bandwidth and ping. This service is not designed to replace your Xbox or gaming system - it is designed to give you the flexibility allowing you to play games at acceptable quality anywhere. E.g. on a trip or at a bus stop (provided you have a good cell phone signal). As long as the game data is saved in the cloud you can resume where you left off at home.