Microsoft had recently released several details about a new gaming service for the many PC and Xbox players around the world, known as Project xCloud. This new project aims to bring their gamers to a whole new level with access to multiple new features.
Project xCloud is intended to run not only on PC and Consoles but other devices such as phones and tablets. This is to give players more flexibility and control while simultaneously provide developers with new avenues for creating games on more than just one platform or limited platforms. This allows players to also not be locked down to one medium for their games and it may hint to cross-platform play which could be a major boon to all parties involved for gaming in the future.
One of the biggest features with this new project is to build some form of groundwork to reduce latency for streaming and support for large multi-user networks. While the blog is a little vague on what it could mean for the future of gaming, we could expect global gaming to be smoother as there will be more data centres for each region.
Microsoft's internal team is currently testing the project and this is what the blog had stated to ensure us of the latency issue, "Developers and researchers at Microsoft Research are creating ways to combat latency through advances in networking topology, and video encoding and decoding. Project xCloud will have the capability to make game streaming possible on 4G networks and will dynamically scale to push against the outer limits of what’s possible on 5G networks as they roll out globally."
While the development and internal testing are still in the works, we can expect to do some testing of our own as Microsoft has stated it will be ready for public testing in 2019 and there also may be additional changes aimed to further improve the system.
Are you excited to see where Microsoft's new system affects gaming in general? Would you like to see other major companies like Sony develop a system similar to this?
