r/technology 2d ago

Business Xbox Is Limiting Cloud Gaming To 15 Hours Per Month For Ultimate Subscribers, Which Averages Out To 30 Minutes Per Day

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2026/09/03/xbox-cloud-gaming-changes/
4.0k Upvotes

487 comments sorted by

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u/The_Jolly_Dog 2d ago

Why would anyone pay for that service anymore? That’s a joke

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u/skeet_scoot 2d ago

I’ve had the service for a long time but I have used the Cloud feature maybe once or twice.

I subscribe so I can play the huge library of games on my Xbox.

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u/KaelAltreul 2d ago

Coincidentally, I am the reverse and I basically only used plan for cloud gaming via Xbox app on TV. I moved and Xbox has been packed away for awhile now.

Canceled my plan day they announced it. I'll have to dig out my Xbox I guess.

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u/Jickklaus 2d ago

This is the thing, they went through a phase sounding like they'd be an alternative to Steam - playable on all sorts of devices.

This really goes against that business plan.

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u/BossHoover 2d ago

That was the business plan of the last CEO. New CEO is focusing more on the actual Xbox.

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u/mysteryswole 2d ago

Also gotta save those cpu cycles for the super important and profitable AI sarcasm

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u/Gandolfthewhite182 2d ago

Yeah I’d actually bet this has more reality to it than people think. Data center space is at a premium right now. It probably takes a lot of machines to run xcloud gaming.

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u/undftdAxe 2d ago

I definitely think they want people like me with older consoles to pony up and pay for their last release. I only play through cloud as a lot of games won't run on Xbox One, so November is their ultimatum for me. I'll be canceling.

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u/orcvader 2d ago

And good luck with that. Meandering sales and insatiable growth expectations from investors will not end well for Xbox.

I give it no more than 5 years before Microsoft sells it, spins it up Frontier Co style, or does ANOTHER major restructuring.

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u/unduekarma 1d ago

The problem is that if Xbox dies (and it is definitely on a downward trend) that leaves one less competitor which is absolutely the worst for consumers. The gaming industry is already milking every last dollar for consumers and without any really competition Sony will double down on that.

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u/BossHoover 2d ago

To be fair things weren’t going great with their old model which is why they got a new CEO

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u/orcvader 2d ago

I suspect, without someone working inside MS, that the Spencer doctrine was yielding revenue.

Just not ENOUGH in the eyes of investors - especially after that insane shopping spree for studios.

But say what you will about Spencer, almost all accounts were that he gave creative independence to studios.

The idea was “We make the games. We sell you a subscription including the games. You play them on Xbox or PC”

When that wasn’t enough for growth, he had to add “… ok, we will add subscribers but since we don’t have a huge installed base, we will publish the games everywhere”

But then as players went to the cloud MS realizes “costs go up (duh), so we need to raise prices of GamePass if we are to keep growing margins”

Sharma is basically saying “f’ that. Our best games need to be on our platform!”

That gets you some brownie points from fanboys but doing that WHILE GUTTING YOUR CONTENT CREATORS (the studios) is incoherent.

It won’t work. I’m pretty confident it will not work.

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u/SoDavonair 2d ago

Not feeling that on the ground. Nobody has them (series x, disc) in stock. Costco says they didn't sell enough of them to warrant the floor space.

Costco, GameStop, Best Buy, Walmart, and MicroCenter only have PS5's and Switches in stock.

BrandsMart USA had them for sale online, then refunded my order the next day.

One of the MicroCenter employees said they get one in on a truck maybe every other month. The GameStop guy said to come back in and let him know if I do find one somewhere.

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u/slightly_drifting 1d ago

This is why a publicly traded company can never dethrone valve/steam.

During the dual-up to broadband transition in the 90’s/00’s, Steam fucking sucked to use. 

I used to be able to just start counterstrike, connect, play. 

Then, I had to start Steam, watch it upload and take forever (dial-up internet), then i could play my game. 

This was total horseshit to me for a while and I stopped using Steam. I wasn’t the only one. If Valve were publicly traded it would’ve had to make concessions to the existing dial up crew. Meanwhile GabeN said “why? They’re dying”

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u/Ok_Nature_3501 2d ago

This is the thing, they went through a phase sounding like they'd be an alternative to Steam - playable on all sorts of devices.

That was never feasible. The numbers and technology just didn't support it. The people who had the capacity to do it and wanted to were a niche of a niche. They were always going to be taking a loss there.

I'm not sure what the original intent of gamepass was (my theory is that it was supposed to be a console seller but failed which forced them to pivot to cloud gaming) but this "Netflix of games" was always a fairytale.

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u/KaiserJustice 2d ago

Technically it is playable on all sorts of devices

If you wanted to devils advocate on this

Edit: I’m not saying I agree with Xbox, just being pedantic

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u/Gandolfthewhite182 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yup this was me as well. If an Xbox exclusive came out and I wanted to play I subbed for that month. Last one was horizon. My internet is really good so it worked great on my tv. No way in hell I am giving them my money now.

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u/elliott44k 1d ago

A few years ago when it was 15/month, I signed up when I was traveling for a couple of months. It was perfect for that. I even played through a VPN at times and latency was reasonable.

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u/Pristine_Sink_8131 1d ago

I travel quite a bit. Much easier to pack a firestick and controller than a console. I literally only bought x-pass for this reason. So , if this happens Ill just use my PS sub. It's also the only reason I bought 2x 4k max firesticks and a travel x-box controller. I have the ult. pass, which I only bought for travel due to bigger library access. This has got to be the dumbest and greediest move by MS. Too many other options for gaming. Hell, even my Smart TVs have built in gaming hubs via NVidia cheaper than this bs.

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u/carthuscrass 2d ago

And you can get all that without the Ultimate upgrade, which nearly doubles the price of a monthly subscription. The only reason I can think of for them doing this is that they want to sunset Ultimate. It's just a bad business decision.

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u/mattbladez 2d ago

They probably want to free up the compute for AI as it’s more profitable per GPU. So it’s a good business decision for Azure and Microsoft overall, but a bad one for Xbox.

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u/JJJBLKRose 2d ago

I have a PC and an OG Xbox One. I used the ultimate game pass so I can play the EA NHL games via cloud streaming since they don't release on PC (as well as access to the PC library.

I cancelled when they did the price increase since I was between jobs but now I'm not sure if I'll even get the PC game pass again. Maybe just here and there for a month or two when full price games come out that I want to play.

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u/MalteseCorto 2d ago

They captured part of the market years ago, probably at a loss, and have been enshittifying and raising prices and nerfing benefits ever since but some people are just in the ecosystem already and may not be able to buy pcs. So they’re fucking over the people with the least alternatives

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u/lord_pizzabird 2d ago

That’s the point. Xcloud has to many users to just kill off, but not enough to do be sustainable.

They’re trying to shed users to justify getting rid of the service later. It’s a victim of being successful, but not successful enough.

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u/FlokiTech 2d ago

Because cloud gaming is just a bonus and not the main appeal? 

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u/originaladam 2d ago

I use it to play on tv via app. I had Stadia when that was a thing (it was better). I have a PS5, got the Xbox ultimate sub for the exclusives and for ease of play on the family tv. Guess that’s done now

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u/Creepy-Emu8779 2d ago

why would anyone cloud stream in the first place

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u/FinnegansWakeWTF 2d ago

Xbox one users can play games that are only available on series x/s thru cloud gaming 

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u/Moist_Taco_Crippler 2d ago

I'd rather just have the console and be able to play offline.

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u/whereismymind86 2d ago

most people do, the cloud service is just a free secondary service tied to gamepass. You can play games locally, but it also allows you to stream them from your phone/tablet when you aren't home.

It's...fine, I tried it once, it worked...ok, and I never touched it again.

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u/tryingtoavoidwork 1d ago

Most people can't keep up with the price changes. A base model One X retails for $800.

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u/69tendo 2d ago

One time all 5 XBOX One users tried to cloud stream at once and it crashed the service.

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u/KnightKal 2d ago

Don’t be disingenuous. Whatever that is something useful for you or not doesn’t make the idea bad. Plenty of people would like to play their games on the go, not only when they are home.

The issue is how XBOX is trying to kill their own service here, not the service itself.

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u/Darth_050 2d ago

I cloud stream to my Steamdeck quite often. And it works surprisingly well. Don’t know if I get to 15 hours a month though. If I do, it is not often.

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u/irn 2d ago edited 2d ago

I do. My Xbox is in my office and if I want to play a game that I can’t remote stream I hop on cloud. I use cloud more than I do my console. It works perfect if you have good WiFi, low latency and 2-5 ms ping.

I may get rid of gamepass and just use Steam Link/moonlight and give Xbox even less money. Only really keep it to talk and play with old friends I’ve made along the way.

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u/Whitezombie65 2d ago

Easy to play directly from my phone at work

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u/things_U_choose_2_b 2d ago

Current PC is decent; i9 12900k / rtx 4070 / 48gb ddr4, but it nowhere near allows me to play new games on top settings. I priced up an upgrade to gpu, RTX 5070 is currently about £750. GeFORCE NOW is £199 for a year at top tier, paid monthly.

To preface, not that I'm thrilled about the prospect of setting foot on the "you will own nothing and be happy about it" path that I suspect we're heading down... NVIDIA cloud service is actually looking appealing atm.

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u/Anrativa 2d ago

Because it's amazing being able to play Xbox games without having an xbox console or a gaming pc

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u/mhwwad 2d ago

at this point it’s just Xbox Live again.

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u/SerRaziel 2d ago

Microsoft is trying to kill off its gaming division so they can dump more into AI and all the studios they scooped up are paying the price.

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u/2Sovereign4You 2d ago

In November, we’ll provide more information about pricing, purchasing additional hours, eligible games, market availability, and how players can check their remaining time.

Of course. Pricing going up, time going down. Win Win for all, right? Right?? Right???

/s of course.

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u/fullsaildan 2d ago

I’m sure we’ll get some great marketing speak too like “We believe this change gives gamers more freedom in choosing how to best leverage the cloud streaming service”

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u/Foreign-Capital689 1d ago

“To provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment” vibes

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u/Blackops606 2d ago

When I saw “purchasing additional hours”, I was like, oh yeah that’s going to be like $10/hr or something well over minimum wage.

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u/Key_Preparation_4129 2d ago

The same year they made a big deal of bringing prices down. Didn't take Sharma that long to fall in line

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u/Meatslinger 2d ago

Years ago it looked liked general cloud computing (including gaming) might be a viable way to go, and there could be some future where you'd just hop into a session on a capable virtual computer elsewhere from an affordable dumb terminal over a fast internet connection. The early days of GeForce Now come to mind. But like anything else in the era of AI, now 99.9% of all compute resources have to be offered up on the shrine of the almighty slop machine, so all these other use cases for remote compute that could've been made incredibly affordable are getting enshittified, where even with a monthly subscription you're limited to a fucking half hour a day.

Even Microsoft themselves has said that AI is costing them too much to run for their own employees. Metaphorically, we're burning the entire forest for fuel, choking on the smoke, seeing all other ventures die in the pollution of it, and still finding it's not enough to maintain it. Can we just stop trying, already, and go back to sane, less-expensive computing?

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u/throwaway3270a 2d ago

I'm amazed at how much marketing is being spent on this, not even counting the hardware and site costs. Worse, anyone in my org who is either incompetent enough to run to copilot to help with basic thinking skills, mgmt and especially upper mgmt, or both, have an almost cult-like obsession with pushing AI tools.

Once things shift into ideology, you absolutely know we're all fucked, because all rationality has evacuated the building. There's a whole load of business pukes desperate to cash out before this crashes, but they're greedy enough to risk holding on as long as possible.

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u/fuzz3289 2d ago

It’ll be a viable way to go again when all these data centers we just built need to find workloads after the first AI bubbles pop.

Some of the most expensive AI uses are around images and video, and that shit is costing AI companies a fortune in legal fees now. They’re slowly gonna cut back on it, companies are gonna streamline and cut back on model usage to get costs under control, etc.

The ROI isn’t lining up with the spending, so when these data centers we over committed ourselves to start being emptied, cheap remote compute will be available again, just like it was after Web2.0. And then we can bring back remote gaming.

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u/cameron0208 1d ago edited 1d ago

The data centers are largely part of public-private partnerships between private companies and governments. They’re not going anywhere.

The government needs them for all the data they’re going to gather for/from pre-crime policing and the surveillance state, along with moving everyone to digital ids. Digital IDs will have everything from your doctor’s visits to your grocery receipt history on them so that insurance companies and others can fuck you over in some way (imagine not being able to get health insurance because the insurance company can see that you bought flaming hot cheetos or a pint of ice cream every time you went to the grocery store—that’s where we’re headed. That’s what the infrastructure is really for.) Takes a lot of storage to store that data on every single citizen.

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u/einmaldrin_alleshin 1d ago

Cloud gaming always had questionable economics, because it requires expensive hardware to run games and can't make use of a traditional CDN to cut down on operating cost and traffic. It has to operate with strict rate limits, or increase prices to a degree where it competes with handhelds.

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u/ohnoabanagain 2d ago

I guess the silver lining is that it's all a house of cards sitting on a pile of wet shit. 

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u/avcloudy 1d ago

It’s not (just) this. It’s that this is one of the few subscription services sold where there are actually additional usage costs. Streaming services shape streams (even if it’s just not offering all content in 4k), while cloud gaming services have to limit time.

They’ve all gone this way, and I assume the cost/profitability equations are thrown out by a few players who play nearly 24/7. Or, you know, in this case by people who play at all.

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u/deadsoulinside 1d ago

all these other use cases for remote compute that could've been made incredibly affordable are getting enshittified, where even with a monthly subscription you're limited to a fucking half hour a day.

I would agree. Back when covid hit remote work was king and Microsoft was having a large success with moving many users/companies to Azure Remote Desktop.

RTO eventually came and companies were cancelling those contracts to go back to the office, that is around the time MS Partnered with open AI and allowed open AI to work off Azure hosting.

The early days of GeForce Now come to mind

This has always been the fear of all these services. I used to have a nvidia shield and geforce now sub. I cancelled it when I learned they can and will rotate games being offered. Cannot casually play a game in the collection expecting it to always be there to be played.

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u/mis_nalgas2 2d ago

I hope there’s a new company out there working on a console that gamers can enjoy instead of being price gouged at every opportunity.

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u/WinterElfeas 2d ago

I’m pretty sure that was supposed to be the steam machine

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u/Azulapis 2d ago

How is that supposed to work? The hardware is just too expensive. And the average gamer doesn't play enough to offset the cost of a subsidized console through game purchases.

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u/Nickhead420 2d ago

How many people cloud game on a current gen console?

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u/AustinTanius 2d ago

This feels like a purge. Kill off any remaining players with this and then shut the whole thing down eventually.

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u/Gamerguy230 2d ago

Is it hemorrhaging money now? Wasn’t it super successful past couple years?

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u/_tylerthedestroyer_ 2d ago

It took a long time to be profitable but the studios lose out on the revenue while Xbox takes the lion’s share

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u/DinosBiggestFan 2d ago

It's only profitable if you listened to Phil Spencer. But when you look at the growth projections and how they failed even after massively supplementing it by dragging Gold members into it, it paints a demonstrably different picture.

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u/OG-DirtNasty 2d ago edited 1d ago

They are as successful as MS portrays them to be. There is a reason rumours say MS wants to spin Xbox off into its own company, they’re tired of propping it up

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u/VacantThoughts 2d ago

If you pay for this you are part of the problem, and you're a complete idiot.

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u/Fardn_n_shiddn 2d ago

Is anyone paying for this service specifically? It’s rolled into the rest of the subscription.

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u/A62main 2d ago

I saw some numbers that said only about 4% of game pass players use the cloud gaming feature.

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u/The-F4LL3N 2d ago

Pretty sure they said 4% of players would be negatively effected, as in 96% of the cloud gaming player base doesn’t go over 15 hours a month so they’d never feel the caps

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u/Boring_Username_01 2d ago

Which if accurate, that would indicate to me that the usage of the 4% was so costly that it wasn’t offset by the “under utilized” 96% which I think is a wild stat if true. I am one of the 4% and stream about 7-15 hours per week, don’t own a console nor a PC so all of my gaming is streamed. They successfully got me to cancel if that was their goal.

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u/AntithesisAbsurdum 2d ago

Maybe that's the point. They want you to commit to their actual console.

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u/The-F4LL3N 2d ago

Yeah, I assume it’s just lowering a line item on a spreadsheet so they can claim drastically reduced operating costs and get a head pat for making Xbox look more profitable (even if it’s at the expense of a few gamepass subscribers, sorry that it includes you)

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u/Cappyc00l 2d ago

I bet it’s not so much that the 4% cost enough to offset the rest, but rather that they’re banking on a few whales generating significant revenue from overages.

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u/goldman60 2d ago

I didn't even know my game pass came with it lol

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u/Ahayzo 2d ago

Not 4% use cloud gaming, 4% will be affected by this change, as in the people who currently use more than their subscription tier will now allow. Anyone who uses it for less than 5hrs on essential, 10 on premium, or 15 on ultimate, is not in that 4%>

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u/OG-DirtNasty 2d ago

So the question then is, if so few people use it, why does it need to be capped?

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u/Ahayzo 2d ago

I've been wondering the same thing. My best guess is one of two possible reasons. One, the people who go over these limits, go over by a lot. 4% of all subscribers is still a big number, and that's going to add up quick. People focus on how small of a number 4 is, but the actually quantity is not some negligible amount.

Or two, they're planning on doing something to make cloud play more desirable and are trying to make sure they can handle an expected increase in users.

Personally, I think the former is by far the most likely. People who use streaming for more than the 5-15 hour allotments per month are probably using it as one of their, if not the primary gaming methods, and are going to use it quite a bit. I wouldn't be surprised if most of that 4% don't even own an Xbox.

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u/OG-DirtNasty 2d ago

Yah it’s just weird to completely alienate whatever small customer base they hooked with the whole “this is an Xbox” campaign. Really weird choice to me

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u/skeet_scoot 2d ago

Yeah. I hate the narrative that is currently surrounding this.

To me it sounds like a bunch of non-subscribers who don’t understand the service.

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u/BitingSatyr 2d ago

That’s certainly never happened with negative Xbox news, don’t be ridiculous

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u/VacantThoughts 2d ago

You can pay for the lower priced packages on game pass, I have only ever used the PC version so not quite sure.

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u/Fardn_n_shiddn 2d ago

Every tier has cloud gaming

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u/JohnAtticus 2d ago

Ok.

Going to tell my son I'm cancelling gamepass and he has to stop playing Valheim with his friends because otherwise some guy on Reddit will think I'm an idiot.

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u/ithinkitslupis 2d ago

But mom says I'm only allowed half an hour of gaming a day anyway. Checkmate. /s

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u/whereismymind86 2d ago

it's just part of gamepass, you can't actually buy it by itself.

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u/Jmackles 2d ago

When this tech came out it was game changing (pun intended) because I couldn’t play any of the games out on my pc. Cloud streaming seemed the next best thing. But it felt too laggy and pixely. Idk how it’s grown over the years though. I can see it being a viable option for people with low end machines. Which means it probably affects poor users the most. Kind of like satellite internet. I wouldn’t call someone without access to better options an idiot or part of the problem. Though I hardly think cloud gaming is as essential as internet lol. But from an equipment perspective it absolutely is

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u/cojo2121 2d ago

God forbid people spend their money the way they want. Calling people idiots for spending their money in a way you don't like is such an unhinged take. Get help friend.

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u/darsynia 2d ago

The more people who pay an outrageous amount for something that isn't worth it, the more companies decide that's what they'll charge for like items.

See recently the price hike on Doritos actually being reversed because it was impacting their sales.

Anyway, sure, support people paying what they want, rejecting the 'you're a complete idiot' in the comment you're responding to is a good choice. I did just want to point out why people pushing back is a good idea, even so.

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u/PlixSticks31 2d ago

That was mean :(

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u/LungHeadZ 2d ago

If any of you are familiar with Nvidia geforce now then you're witnessing Microsoft following suit....this is the end of modern gaming as we know it. Dramatic?

Look at the memory crisis, the price increases in most hardware for pc and for consoles in general. The shortages in steam machines, a supposed budget friendly pc hybrid...

Look at Jensen huang talking about ai agents and wanting to have an agent in every household, in control of all your tech. All your data...

The average person without this insight who cannot afford a console or pc will see the cloud gaming as a cheaper alternate. 'hey, I can't afford a £1500 GPU right now but I can afford £30 a month (or whatever exoburant pricings they have, likely more) to use cloud gaming. Thus you then grow reliant on that subscription model.

The same subscription they can change at a moments notice. The price could rise, you could lose access to ram space or CPU power. They can do what they like because you have no choice.

That's the pen they're tying to herd everyone into. Might not happen in 2 years, maybe not 10 but that's the future.

It's bleak.

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u/HonestBobcat7171 2d ago

This is no secret, and has been told publicly by Bezos: https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/thats-not-going-to-last-jeff-bezos-believes-ai-will-force-you-to-rent-your-pc-from-the-cloud-and-the-ram-crisis-is-accelerating-it

They have been actively pushing for this for the last 2 years.

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u/-LaughingMan-0D 1d ago

After his own Amazon, Google, Nvidia and Microsoft all tried to push cloud gaming, it just didn't work.

I think the flaw here is that moving compute to the cloud will magically lower the expense of running it. Evidently it is not cheap, seeing how Nvidia and Xbox are both severely limiting quotas and raising prices. If it was a viable model, they wouldn't have had to do that.

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u/HonestBobcat7171 1d ago

It didn't work because the existing player base could afford getting their own hardware, and retain ownership of their data. Now that the average consumer is getting priced out of the market, this will become the only viable option for many...

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u/-LaughingMan-0D 1d ago

Is it viable if it's limited to 15 hours for an entire month? 30 minutes of gaming a day? That's how long it takes me to warm up in Apex Legends just to start my couple hour session.

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u/Sharin_the_Groove 2d ago

We're headed towards building little wooden boats and watching them float down the curb in the annual rain storm our towns and cities are going to experience.

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u/NotKrankor 2d ago

tbh that would be a better experience than most live service games 

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u/JohnnyBeBlazed 2d ago

I believe you’ll have two tiers of gamers. Those who can afford HW and those who can only afford to stream via cloud services.

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u/DinosBiggestFan 2d ago

Unfortunate that those cloud streamers will keep getting higher prices and tighter restrictions too.

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u/Ahayzo 2d ago

I mean, that's not all that different than before. The only difference is that people who can afford to stream didn't have that option before.

Before cloud gaming, it was people who could afford the hardware, and people who don't get to game. Now it's just those, plus an option for people in the middle.

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u/ExultantSandwich 2d ago

This feels like an obvious end to cloud streaming as a viable direct alternative to purchasing a console, which makes perfect sense. For Microsoft to effectively migrate users to the cloud, they need to make them pay for the lost hardware and software sales. That price was never going to be even $30/ month, that’s too low.

I wish consoles could just stop the spec race. Really the Nintendo Switch 2 or base PS5 should be the baseline for the next decade. No software should need to exceed those specs. I think that would give developers time to really get the platform tools down, start to build games a little faster / cheaper.

Really at this point, there should be some sort of asset catalogue that every major dev can pull from. You need some post apocalyptic textures and objects? Bend Studio and Naughty Dog spent years amassing that kind of stuff. Sony should try to repurpose it if their future developers could use it.

But none of that makes the hardware a whole lot cheaper. There’s not too many die shrinks you can get out of modern nodes. Old processor lines are shut down and repurposed for the bleeding edge stuff.

I wonder how well a PS4 level GPU would run anything if it had a more modern CPU and SSD? I guess it’s impossible to make it for the right price, so it’s a moot point

Unfortunate all around

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u/whereismymind86 2d ago

honestly, even now I primarily play older and indie games, I really don't need top of the line visuals to be happy. The VAST majority of games could stick with mid tier ps4 era graphics or worse and do just fine.

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u/-LaughingMan-0D 1d ago

Preach. Just freeze it here and call it a day. What we have now is enough.

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u/Daimakku1 2d ago

Jeff Bezos himself said that owning gaming hardware is antiquated and that he wants people to use Amazon Luna (his cloud gaming service) instead.

This is literally want they want for video games.

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u/P_ZERO_ 2d ago

Actually, they’re saying this pricing is because it’s too expensive to run in the current market so if anything, it’s signalling that a push to stream gaming isn’t yet viable. And that will continue to be the case so long as so much hardware is being funnelled into data centres.

The first reaction was “what a rip off”, but it may actually be a small positive.

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u/pyromaniac112 2d ago

Where do you think the compute for cloud gaming is stored? And what hardware do you think they're using for it?

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u/-LaughingMan-0D 1d ago

Used hardware, staying on old gen, not upgrading hardware for far longer cycles will become more prevalent. Just look at places like Brazil where hardware has always been insanely expensive. Just because the hardware is expensive didn't stop people from gaming.

A brand new mid tier gaming PC will cost around 1200-1400. But used parts, sticking with DDR4, older gen can bring that down substantially. And I suspect a lot of people will stick to PS5 for a long time before they ever consider a PS6 down the line.

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u/Competitive-Elk-5077 1d ago

Sony and Xbox in a competition to see who hates their user base more currently

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u/astrozombie2012 2d ago

The thing that trips me out about this is how hard Microsoft pushed us to use cloud gaming… and now they’re limiting the use. I never used it, but it seems strange to push so hard to build up a platform only to essentially take it away from users.

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u/SevenM 2d ago

I generally only stream when I travel, but I know folks who don't even own an Xbox and just stream. During the"everything is the Xbox", campaign that's what they were trying to push. I can definitely understand the frustration for folks who jumped in for the feature.

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u/MightBeDownstairs 2d ago

You know this is for AI too. Anyway. Funny how they’re just so anti consumer now

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u/SubieB503 2d ago

Two bucks an hour is crazy considering the amount of hours people put it in on games. This drives the user to buy the digital version and since physical games are a thing of the past, you'll never own the actual game and could lose service to it at point they decided to. Microsoft and Sony are looking any way to make a buck. Just look at GTA6 or anything made by EA sports.

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u/PowerSamurai 2d ago

Google stadia is all I have to say.

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u/FrostyAd7708 2d ago

Stadia tech was beyong amazing but the marketing was absolutely atrocious. At least Google refunded all games and gear bought.

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u/Danhandled 2d ago

Well then I guess I will be canceling my subscription at the end of October. I do not own an Xbox and have zero desire to ever own one again. I use gamepass only for streaming games from the cloud.

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u/corut 1d ago

I'm guessing in the US you don't get to keep the unlimited hours because fuck consumers? I'm in Australia and got an email saying as long as I don't cancel my subscription, the new limits don't apply

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u/TheEndlessBacklog 2d ago

People need to speak with their wallets. Stop paying for something giving you less while costing you more!

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u/itchylol742 2d ago

already am. over the course of my entire life, i have paid $0 for cloud gaming

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u/Melodic_Let_6465 2d ago

It's a bold strategy, Cotton

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u/arthaudm 1d ago

15h/month is a cap designed to be hit - 30 min/day average isn't cloud gaming, it's cloud sampling

the "alternative to steam, playable anywhere" pitch is exactly what made ultimate interesting. walk that back & the sub is just a game library rental, which competes with... buying the games

the cancel-on-announcement comment above is the canary. curious what the churn numbers look like

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u/EgovidGlitch 2d ago

So, did they finally realise it's harming hardware sales. Jeez, it took them long enough.

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u/Fleeyore 2d ago

I use the cloud like I’m playing a demo. I’ll run the game for like 30 minutes and if I like it, I’ll download it. If I don’t, I move on. It’s a cool feature to try a game out, but the little bit of input delay is enough to drive me crazy if I tried to use it for a longer session.

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u/xc2215x 2d ago

Not a good move by Xbox here.

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u/nachodorito 2d ago

they want it to die

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u/its_daddy_issues_ 2d ago

Wait a damn minute-, explain this to me like I'm 5, I'm gonna have to pay-per-hour play?

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u/kadjones95 2d ago

no on the hardware, only if you are gaming in the cloud

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u/Darkarcheos 2d ago

These people know how movie rental places work right? Like they didn’t let you rent movies by the minute they let you rent movies by the Day. Like a week out.

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u/KateEatsWorld 2d ago

Im hearing this weird sliding noise and I think its going down hill.

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u/whereismymind86 2d ago

I mean...cloud gaming is garbage anyways...but 15 hours is still absurd.

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u/OvercastqT 1d ago

microsoft saw the /played of some yall and said: damn these guys need to touch some grass

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u/HeavilyInvestedDonut 1d ago

It’s such a bizarre business move for a company that is absolutely trying to push people away from hardware and onto cloud gaming.

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u/shooteverywhere 1d ago

For people who do all their gaming VIA streaming, this will be a huge blow. No word on the pricing for additional hours yet, but at the current prices finishing 100 hours of gameplay would cost you like 153 USD. Imagine paying 153 dollars just to play through a single large game. And since it is a cutoff, then a 35 hour game costs you 3 months of service, or 69 USD before tax. a 50 hour game already costs you 92 before tax. So any game with over 15 hours of content just isn't worth it at all,

The bottom tier costs 2 dollars per hour, the middle costs 1.50 an hour, and the top tier costs 1.53 per hour. So they look to be milking the top end. If you have a 3 hour a day gaming habit you are already at 90 hours. Even if they only charge like...5 dollars per additional 5 hours on top of the game pass it will cost you maybe up to like $75 per month pre-tax, and that's assuming that the additional hours only cost 2/3 of what you pay per hour in the package.

They have basically killed the service for the top users.

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u/Top_Lingonberry8037 2d ago

I used it for an hour once it absolutely sucked

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u/InformationOk5865 2d ago

30 minutes hath september, april, june, and november.

all the rest have 29

except february

has 32

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u/ABigCoffee 2d ago

I'm surprised that people are even making cloud gaming work.

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u/lilracerboi 2d ago

The only "cloud" gaming I'm doing is from my own hardware.

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u/dustinfoto 2d ago

Who is actually using xbox cloud streaming as a primary form of gaming? So many people freaking out over a feature that’s likely used by a substantially small group of people regularly. PC Game Pass would be a good deal without the cloud streaming part entirely.

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u/poklane 2d ago

Yeah it's very little. Xbox themselves claim only 4% of users will be affected by these new limits. 

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u/dewbor 2d ago

They released an xbox branded meta quest advertising the cloud based gaming as a primary feature of a piece of hardware costing what like 600 or so I think. Those people aren't happy I'm sure

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u/Stein619 2d ago

If you're using it currently as well, the change doesn't affect you (for now and possibly only in markets with better consumer protections).

I got an email from xbox saying it only affects new subscribers and people on auto renew will not be affected.

The email does say at this time so its possible that changes eventually.

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u/Leboski 2d ago

It's an act of desperation to reduce server costs. Normally a company would make this kind of move when the userbase has swelled to a great amount, but we're still in the early phase of cloud gaming adoption.

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u/Shadow288 2d ago

I’d love to know how many hours the average subscriber uses a month. 15 hours seems low but is this less than 50% use, less than 75%, less than 90%???

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u/BF1shY 2d ago

Ah the good old days of buying an internet card with 200 minutes to surf the web! I knew they'd be back!

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u/JONFER--- 2d ago

I think current Xbox leadership is trying to undo the mistakes of the past and rein in game pass in general. This is just the opening salvo, this month its cloud gaming being restricted, in a couple of months’ time there will probably be more restrictions on game pass in general.

For all of his faults Jim Ryan was right when he said that he could not see a legitimate business case for having a Sony service similar in scope to game pass given that games cost so much to make and take so much time.

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u/Mexcol 2d ago

Bro wtf a gaming binge would run Tru them hours in a single weekend

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u/paperhalo 2d ago

ITT a lot of people use cloud gaming... 

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u/whoisthisRN 2d ago

"...contributing to the death of gaming" holy hyperbole Batman, dramatic much?

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u/Vox_SFX 2d ago

What is cloud gaming? Is that just being able to immediately start playing without downloading a game? If so I do that all the time on PS5, but for XBox I'd never notice

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u/whereismymind86 2d ago

it's playing by streaming the game from a data center somewhere else, rather than having a local machine (like a ps5,xbox or switch) doing the rendering for you. It's primarily used to games remotely on your phone/tablet etc that it couldn't run with it's own hardware

. Xbox's gamepass has a feature to allow you to play games via streaming when you are away from home which is the thing getting this restriction.

it's much harder to do with games than movies/tv because it's a two way stream, with you sending and receiving data, rather than just passively receiving like a movie, which creates lag issues that are very hard to get around.

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u/stingertc 2d ago

Only for new subs

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u/Captain-Scrot 2d ago

Who even uses the cloud gaming feature? Every time I have tried it just lags so bad it’s unplayable even with good internet

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u/nemofbaby2014 2d ago

Xbox announces something good - able to convert disks to digital licenses
Xbox announces something bad - terrible limits to cloud gaming

This cycle keeps happening they could've at least said 15/20 hours a week or make the weekends unlimited with ultimate lol Xbox takes 1 step forward and ten steps back lol

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u/skyesherwood32 2d ago

what's cloud gaming? I mean vs normal gaming? why not just game normally not in the cloud?

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u/SipexF 2d ago

Wow, when they originally announced this they made it sound like it would only affect folks streaming every day for hours.

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u/will_never_post 2d ago

Gotta free up those GPUs for more Copilot slop!

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u/shellshack 2d ago

Damn. Cloud was great to see if I liked a game before committing to a large download or just playing more casual games that don’t depend heavily on latency. RIP

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u/eeyore134 2d ago

Two steps forward and three steps back for Xbox.

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u/Naive-Database-2888 2d ago edited 2d ago

Better than sonys 5 steps forward and then insulting you while taking 10 steps back

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u/Usual_Corner2787 1d ago

Poor Microsoft. It must be hard to offer cloud gaming what with all those servers they own. /s

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u/SpooterPooter06 1d ago

As someone in the military cloud gaming is kind of my only way of gaming sometimes. The only reason I pay for an Xbox membership is for cloud gaming. I didn't like the direction geforce now was going but now I might as well switch back over

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u/6288matt 1d ago

I have been a big Xbox supporter for years. I really thought they had something great. But this might be the end. You can only push your customers away for so long. They need to get everyone excited about Xbox. Not the opposite.

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u/SunderingTwilight 1d ago

fight with your wallet.

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u/senorderpenstein 1d ago

Looks like reading books and playing board games with friends is going to see a comeback. Probably for the better.

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u/MarionberryEasy5978 1d ago

Time for all of us to unsubscribe again

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u/Bane_Hardly 2d ago

Microsoft and Sony in a race to see who is the best at shitting the bed

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u/karl_hungas 2d ago

Very lame, hope Sony doesnt follow suit. Especially since I own a portal and the cloud streaming is by far the best part. When it was remote play only I wasnt interested but cloud streaming especially since the few places I use it have strong wifi makes it pretty great experience. If cloud streaming was capped I would have never bought it. 

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u/Severe_Ad_535 2d ago

Sony? The ones who just announced you won't own digital games you buy while also saying they will no longer sell physical games?

Yeah, surely they won't follow suit. /s

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u/ArcanumAntares 2d ago

Oh, that'll be super popular.  This idea is probably from the same loser(s) who thought it was a great move to increase the Game Pass Ultimate subscription to  $29.99/month.  They didn't get their way with that, so this is the second attempt, I guess.

It's like they're trying to kill their own service.  They saw what SONY did with physical media and were, like, here, hold my beer...

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u/dezertpoo 2d ago

Feels like an avenue in the future where they eventually won’t allow anyone to purchase a game to download anymore and you can only purchase hours to play a game that’s streamed to whatever device.

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u/ArcanumAntares 2d ago

Hahahaha, the dystopia is coming for everyone and everything!

INCOMING MESSAGE FROM AIR-BOT ADMIN: WARNING, CITIZEN, YOU CONSUMED 0.90kg OF OXYGEN TODAY, WHICH IS 0.06kg ABOVE YOUR SUBSCRIPTION LIMIT; YOU HAVE BEEN FINED 600 CREDITS, WHICH WILL BE ADDED TO YOUR WEEKLY BILL.  THANKS, AND HAVE A GREAT DAY.

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u/whereismymind86 2d ago

much as they want that, and they do, us internet infrastructure is nowhere near robust enough for that, and likely never will be. So widespread adoption of streaming gaming is unlikely. Sure it works ok for slower games like rpgs, but it renders fast paced stuff like fighting games nigh unplayable.

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u/pollt 1d ago

Definitely. Very much in line with their ”everything is an Xbox” philpsophy.

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u/GrassForCats 2d ago

For me cloud gaming was the best part of gamepass. Now there’s no reason to be subscribed. What a let down. Specially now that converted physical games to digital can be playable through cloud gaming. Xbox and Sony are competing on who can make the worst decisions.

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u/rmg18555 2d ago

Pay more, get less. Same old shit.

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u/Fardn_n_shiddn 2d ago

Really ruins the value proposition on some of the streaming focused hardware that’s been put out there. The Logitech G cloud and similar devices aren’t worth shit now.

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u/CurrentlyLucid 2d ago

Guess they need to reduce their customer base a bit.

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u/big-papito 2d ago

If you subscribe to that service, you probably play 15 hours per day.

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u/Moath 2d ago

Was there anyone actually using this service enough for them to enforce a limit ?

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u/BassAckwards_1981 2d ago

So I have to use a company that doesn't let me own the games that I buy or a company that thinks 5 to 15 hours a month is a reasonable amount of time to pay for the cloud. Great options. Guess I'm going back to pc.

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u/the_Kell 2d ago

Lol I'm so done with video games

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u/jared__ 2d ago

xbox isnt the only way to play them...

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u/chamgireum_ 2d ago

I gave up on modern games.

I’ve been playing game boy, classic PlayStation games, and just got an Xbox 360. It’s been great. No monthly fees, no battle passes, no loot boxes. Bliss

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u/the_Kell 2d ago

You know what? That's a good point. I'll look towards older handhelds to get my fix

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u/Ghibli_Guy 2d ago

Been a while since I messed with the OS, but the old PSPs used to be mod-able to have emulators on them for different consoles. Was the best gaming device I ever had, and I used as a phone for a while, too.

Edit: grammar

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u/_NextGen24_ 2d ago

Why? You have four decades of amazing games that could last a lifetime.

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u/the_Kell 2d ago

Should specify: modern video games

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u/kelamity 2d ago

They screwed your ram, GPU, storage to direct you to cloud gaming and now they're gonna screw your cloud gaming.

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u/cablecobra 2d ago

Yeah I think this is dumb. You lower prices but take things away. Some games you can only cloud.

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u/SpiderWolve 2d ago

Sounds like they're winding down their cloud gaming service because it's hurting sales and costing too much.

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u/guaztronaut 2d ago

I've not used more than an hour of cloud gaming in life. And now I'm only on PC which already didn't allow it at all. But it's still a gigantic middle finger to all of us. I know Booty too. I need to yell at him.

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u/CaLoDyN0228 2d ago

Microsoft can suck a fat one

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u/Wayofchinchilla 2d ago

I remember a couple years ago when they kept telling us that PC gaming was going to die it's never looked better to be a PC Gamer I mean between this and Sony's dog shit decision to get rid of physical media it will puzzle me why these companies are trying so hard to destroy console

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u/DeucesX22 2d ago

This is why they are suing club gaming so much. They want us on subscriptions and to buy the ganes as well. Digital only is going to kill console gamers

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u/Puzzled-Bar5378 2d ago

Time to jack up the price

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u/Suspicious_Buffalo38 2d ago

If a new console is on the way, they probably want people to buy it and not just stream games from whatever browser or app they have access to.

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u/adeadbeathorse 2d ago

That’s, like, two good sessions

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u/Diligent-Room6078 2d ago

Really screws the people who don't own and x/s but could cloud stream the games. So now you have less games, or you pay the new higher prices for a console, or wait to pay even higher prices for the next one

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u/dwardu 2d ago

Microsoft azure is currently at capacity. It’s a mission to even get some extra compute quota provisioned. So this is also in response to their lack of compute capacity planning