It’s no coincidence that less than one week after Google announced Project Stream, Microsoft has broken cover with more details on its own streaming platform, dubbed Project xCloud. The core idea behind both platforms is the same – and very familiar to longer term readers of this site. Rather than buy a console and play games on it, titles are hosted on the cloud instead. The user has a basic client device that beams input commands over the internet, with video and audio streamed back. The concept is simple – Netflix for games – but the application is somewhat more challenging. Prior attempts at getting this to work have fallen flat but Microsoft, Google – and other unannounced players – reckon that the time is right for the technology to work.
Microsoft’s announcement trailer shows key first party Xbox franchises – Forza, Gears of War and Halo – running on tablets and smartphones. These are low-power devices incapable of running games of this complexity but what they do have in common is the inclusion of hardware-accelerated video decoding – and along with internet access, that’s all that’s needed for this concept to work. All the game code is hosted on servers within the datacentre, and the Microsoft reveal video tells us that the platform holder has built bespoke hardware for xCloud, based on a stripped down, rebuilt version of the Xbox One S console.
On the face of it, it might not sound as if there’s too much new going on here. After all, PlayStation Now is built on the same principle of stock console hardware refactored into blade servers, hosted in datacentres. However, Microsoft is making specific claims in its video which could represent a fundamental improvement over the Sony offering in terms of image quality – and especially latency.
Source: Eurogamer Project xCloud: can Microsoft make a streaming platform that works?