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Xbox "Next" - A Cloud Based Console For The Future

Do you think Microsoft will Opt in for a Cloud Based Ecosystem in the Future?

  • Yes

    Votes: 59 45.4%

  • No

    Votes: 71 54.6%
  • Total voters
    130
  • Poll closed .
zomboden

zomboden

Banned
Here me out. We heard rumors about being able to play any digital game you own on xCloud awhile back. Currently you can only play games that are on game pass on the xCloud service.

This recent Phil Spencer interview got me thinking about the future. Why would he downplay console sales? I think we are seeing the shift soon that the CMA had predicted/had access to information about.

I think maybe not the very next iteration of Xbox but very soon we will see a cloud based Xbox system. It will launch to dashboard via cloud, and you will navigate the UI on the cloud. The only thing you won't do is download games because you won't need to anymore. All games will work without needing a download.

But the potential for dynamic scaling GPU/CPU/RAM power is mind boggling. We look at Geforce Now for example, this year they launched their 4080 premium tier. If you subscribe $20 to Geforce Now you get access to a cloud based gaming PC boasting a RTX 4080 with a custom 24GB of VRAM allocated to it. And AMD threadripper 5955X equivalent CPU performance. More power than I think even the PS5 pro/Series X Pro will have when it comes out in a year or two. (Rumored to come out).

Imagine a world where Microsoft can scale GPU/CPU/RAM power dynamically to games. A more demanding game can have as much power from the server rack as it needs to run at a locked 4k/120 8k/60 8k/120 fps. And they can allocate less for more indie/pixel art style games. A console where you would never have to upgrade because the upgrades are done automatically over time to the servers themselves. You will always have a next gen console. Never have to fork out money for a new system.

This is where Microsoft can outshine Sony and where they cannot afford to compete. Not console sales. A future where you see digital foundry reviews of PS7 vs Xbox Next and one is 4K/60 and one is 8K/120.

Thank you for taking the time to read my pure speculation thread.
 
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Zadom

Zadom

Member
They need what ever tech Nvidia GeForce uses. That is easily the best streaming I’ve experienced. I wonder if it’s tech all companies can use eventually or if you have to pay Nvidia for. Either way I hope all games will be streamed like it in the future.
 
funkygunther

funkygunther

Banned
They're in a better position to do this than the current players are but there's still no majority user base to pick up the mantle.
 
zomboden

zomboden

Banned
funkygunther said:
They're in a better position to do this than the current players are but there's still no majority user base to pick up the mantle.
Click to expand...
All you need is some positive word of mouth and for people to realize that the barrier of entry is only a $15 subscription and you can play on devices you already own RIGHT NOW. I think we could see a major shift quickly.
 
Agent X

Agent X

Member
zomboden said:
Imagine a world where Microsoft can scale GPU/CPU/RAM power dynamically to games. A more demanding game can have as much power from the server rack as it needs to run at a locked 4k/120 8k/60 8k/120 fps. And they can allocate less for more indie/pixel art style games. A console where you would never have to upgrade because the upgrades are done automatically over time to the servers themselves. You will always have a next gen console. Never have to fork out money for a new system.
Click to expand...

This sounds an awful lot like what Stadia was aiming to accomplish, for better or for worse.
 
zomboden

zomboden

Banned
Agent X said:
This sounds an awful lot like what Stadia was aiming to accomplish, for better or for worse.
Click to expand...
Stadia's tech was alright. But they never upgraded or invested in it at all after launch.

I'm currently trying to play Redfall on xCloud and it's the Series S version and with the input latency and blur from the low resolution stream, the low resolution game, and the 30 fps I feel like I'm about to projectile vomit.

Geforce Now is currently on an entirely different level. They have a fully functional 4K/120 stream.
 
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LRKD

LRKD

Member
Only a matter of time unfortunately. Why sells games and consoles when you can get a constant stream of money from subscriptions. And with a stream only service, you could remove the used market, and possibly even piracy. They might even go stadia and make you pay for the service and still buy the games you don't own lmfao,
 
Mr.Phoenix

Mr.Phoenix

Member
zomboden said:
All you need is some positive word of mouth and for people to realize that the barrier of entry is only a $15 subscription and you can play on devices you already own RIGHT NOW. I think we could see a major shift quickly.
Click to expand...
Its thinking like his that gets Xbox in things that end up backfiring, I do hope for their sake the people making their decisions isn't doing this too.

While I get that is where they're going with eventually, lets however not pretend that all it takes is a $15 subscription. No. You will have to buy a controller, you will have to have decent internet, and you will have to have a TV capable of running their App in a halfway decent way. It also means that you are going to take a lot of certain genres off the table because streaming will never be as good as local hardware when it comes to latency, and whether is a lot of genres that you can get away with in that end, there are those that you simply cannot.

And lets also not forget that this whole cloud shit is not even new... its been done before and every time we hear this talk of how its going to be great but that's just not ever the case.

If you ask me, and I wont get into it here cause that's not what this thread is about, I feel there's something MS can do to really turn all this around. Something that could make them even bigger than PS... but they seem too stupid to do it. At this point, its more likely to be something done by steam than MS.

I swear MS is so stupid its shocking to me. They are literay sitting and have been sitting on a gold mine for decades.

Maybe I make a thread about it or wait for someone to make one where it would be appropriate to discuss the future of Xbox.
 
T4keD0wN

T4keD0wN

Member
Consoles dont since they barely make any profit, their platforms (stores) do. Consoles serve purely as a vehicle to deliver the games to you, they are in the way and hold people from buying the software that they actually profit from.

I am sure they want cloud to be the main way to play in the future. It has to feel bad for them having to create millions of machines every few years and having their sales suffer for current gen software because theres not enough machines to satisfy the market. Cloud can solve this for them, but as long as consumers want consoles as a way of playing games theyre forced to give you what you want.

Why would they bother with "cloud console" when it can just be something as simple as a tv or an android app on machines they dont have to go through the trouble of manufacturing and distributing?

A better version of this "future" has already been here for a long time.
 
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killatopak

killatopak

Member
I really really really don't like the cloud.

Your experience is basically down to how close you are to a data center.
 
Mr.Phoenix

Mr.Phoenix

Member
THE DUCK said:
No. Unless they can get the lag down more and the image quality up......
Click to expand...
And it's not even possible to get the lag down more... this is what I don't understand about people when talking about streaming. There are things that are possible and there are those that are impossible. No matter how good you can get lag/latency down on streaming, local hardware will still be at least 50-80% better. But that's not even the real issue, the real issue is that the numbers are not even going to remain consistent. Too many fucking variables.

Streaming will always have an inherent built-in bottleneck.
 
Reallink

Reallink

Member
Zadom said:
They need what ever tech Nvidia GeForce uses. That is easily the best streaming I’ve experienced. I wonder if it’s tech all companies can use eventually or if you have to pay Nvidia for. Either way I hope all games will be streamed like it in the future.
Click to expand...

Geforce Now runs all the games at 120Hz and 240Hz, which is 1/2 and 1/4 the input lag of the cheap ass Xbox and Playstation "Blades" Sony and Microsoft use in their server farms. The "tech" is simply that Nvidia uses $1000+ GPU's for every session while Sony and MS use $200 console SOC's.
 
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Stare-Bear

Stare-Bear

Banned
Image quality on XCloud suuuuuucks at the moment. And before you get your panties in a bunch, I’m on 600mbs/down 400mbs/up in the UK. So it’s not on my end.
 
Fahdis

Fahdis

Member
Mr.Phoenix said:
And it's not even possible to get the lag down more... this is what I don't understand about people when talking about streaming. There are things that are possible and there are those that are impossible. No matter how good you can get lag/latency down on streaming, local hardware will still be at least 50-80% better. But that's not even the real issue, the real issue is that the numbers are not even going to remain consistent. Too many fucking variables.

Streaming will always have an inherent built-in bottleneck.
Click to expand...

Have you used GeForce Ultimate? At this point this is conjecture.
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
I don't see how this takes off. Like what is the quantum leap that makes people buy a $60 controller but not want to buy a console and not want to buy games. You are already trying to get off next gen consoles at 199 or whatever and giving them away with promotions.
 
zomboden

zomboden

Banned
Stare-Bear said:
Image quality on XCloud suuuuuucks at the moment. And before you get your panties in a bunch, I’m on 600mbs/down 400mbs/up in the UK. So it’s not on my end.
Click to expand...
xCloud sucks bad for me in West Virginia. But Geforce Now and Stadia worked very well. Latency is still noticable but after a short time you kinda adjust to it. xCloud has nausea inducing quality for me right now.

There was a point where I was playing Path of Exile on Geforce Now and I couldn't even tell it was cloud based. The only time I got noticable video compression was when a ton of particle effects were happening on screen. Nvidia's servers have a 1 ms latency connection to the game, and I have a 40-45 ms latency to the stream itself. If I played myself I would probably have 40-50 ms latency anyways.
 
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Crayon

Crayon

Member
onnextflix5 said:
Well if they do and Nintendo and Sony keep local consoles, it’s the end for Xbox and ms gaming.
Click to expand...

I think they can pivot ms gaming back to what it was before all these misadventures. It should be the fun part of their software catalog for pc and I suppose cloud service. They used to be widely regarded as a publisher of great games before xbox ever existed.
 
Unknown?

Unknown?

Member
Cool no way of even having control of your own games.

The cloud doesn't exist, it just means "someone else's computer."
 
SlimeGooGoo

SlimeGooGoo

Party Gooper
e2a.png
 
Damigos

Damigos

Member
Whatever they decide to do they must focus and commit to it. Right now MS seems like a ship with no captain and its bad for everyone. Competition is always good
 
Pelao

Pelao

Member
Well, if it's anything like their current service and others like it, it would work very poorly where I live, and probably in many other places as well. But hey, they are free to lose even more market if they want to.
 
MacReady13

MacReady13

Member
LRKD said:
Only a matter of time unfortunately. Why sells games and consoles when you can get a constant stream of money from subscriptions. And with a stream only service, you could remove the used market, and possibly even piracy. They might even go stadia and make you pay for the service and still buy the games you don't own lmfao,
Click to expand...
I’d rather make money from a full retail sale than make money from a subscription. But maybe that’s just me.
 
aries_71

aries_71

Junior Member
There will be a next generation after this one, but I think it will be last one. As soon as MS bundles xCloud on the main TV brands, Samsung, LG, etc, and makes a big marketing push for it, millions of casuals will be instantaneously moved to cloud gaming. The super enthusiastic gamer that appreciates local gaming advantages may have PC gaming left, in the same way many music and movie enthusiasts today have alternatives to streaming.
 
IFireflyl

IFireflyl

Gold Member
The U.S. (Microsoft's largest segment in the gaming market, and where they are headquartered) has a large number of ISPs using data caps. I don't see how a cloud-based, always-online console would be feasible as it would require a stable internet connection, and it would use more data than video streaming with Netflix/Hulu/et cetera. This doesn't seem like a good route for Microsoft to take.
 
N

Neilg

Member
IFireflyl said:
The U.S. (Microsoft's largest segment in the gaming market, and where they are headquartered) has a large number of ISPs using data caps. I don't see how a cloud-based, always-online console would be feasible as it would require a stable internet connection, and it would use more data than video streaming with Netflix/Hulu/et cetera. This doesn't seem like a good route for Microsoft to take.
Click to expand...

streaming uses about 9gb/hr, maybe less these days - so even with a cap it's about 110 hours a month. Most casual video game players dont do more than 10 hours a week. anyone who does more is tech savvy enough to switch internet provider or pay extra to remove the cap. it's not really a big deal.
 
IFireflyl

IFireflyl

Gold Member
Neilg said:
streaming uses about 9gb/hr, maybe less these days - so even with a cap it's about 110 hours a month. Most casual video game players dont do more than 10 hours a week. anyone who does more is tech savvy enough to switch internet provider or pay extra to remove the cap. it's not really a big deal.
Click to expand...

The 9GB/hour is still more than services like Netflix, and that data is generally going to be added to the data people are using for their video streaming services. As to your bolded section, that's not how it works. A gigantic section of the U.S. has limited options for their ISPs, and you can't just pay extra to remove the data cap. The companies that have the data caps want to be able to gouge you for going over. Until last summer, I didn't have the option for an internet plan without a data cap.
 
N

Neilg

Member
IFireflyl said:
The 9GB/hour is still more than services like Netflix, and that data is generally going to be added to the data people are using for their video streaming services. As to your bolded section, that's not how it works. A gigantic section of the U.S. has limited options for their ISPs, and you can't just pay extra to remove the data cap. The companies that have the data caps want to be able to gouge you for going over. Until last summer, I didn't have the option for an internet plan without a data cap.
Click to expand...
I was wrong. 9gb/hr was when I was in the beta for google's streaming. Netflix is 7gb/hr in 4k. xbox gamepass uses 3gb/hr.

Aside from that, lots of people who use capped internet do have the choice and choose to not pay more. With caps there are still a shitload of people left who only play 40, or even 10 hours of games a month and can fit it within their cap, that's a huge market that was never going to drop $500 on a console.
If you had a data cap but knew there was 40 hours worth of gaming left on it each month, and couldn't afford a console, would you drop $15 for a few months to play a game you'd otherwise have to pay $60 for? Seems like it makes sense on paper.

This is the end goal of what Microsoft has been working towards by building gamepass. they're planning for this to break into a market that would NOT typically buy a ps5 or switch. they have ran the numbers, they've got dudes who's job is spreadsheet modeling making half a million dollars a year to inform these decisions, they've all been approved by a very large team, it's a long term vision.

However I dont think it's going to pay off anyway. I think it's an untapped market for a reason. I have a bunch of friends who don't have consoles and are interested in games - but they can afford consoles, they just know they don't have time to get sucked into a game and choose to not buy them. They're also not going to pick up a controller and spend $15 a month to play it on their samsung tv's.
 
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