That makes sense. Hook people with the basics, and if you want more or better, step up to the next level hardware. More or less what they did with the release of the Xbox One X.
i’d love to stream directly from my own pc to my mobile wherever i am.
Analogy doesn’t apply. XboneS plays every XboneX game, just at lower framerates and/or resolution. This is about availability, not performance. Some games won’t be available for that subscription, so you’ll need to buy them at full price or wait months until they’re added and miss the zeitgeist. That said, something like a $40 flat fee to play every Xbone game in the Xbox Game Pass, with no up-front fee to purchase a console, that’s a pretty neat service. And you can subscribe for a month at a time, and quit when there’s nothing to play. No sunk costs.
To me, is best to pay 60$, even if end not playing a videogame. Than playing has much has I want, but have to look at the clock. Having to look at the clock is going to make me feel bad. While paying 60$ and having a “has much has you want to eat” menu, feel like FREEDOM.
OK sure, I get it. You’re a free man, not a number.
As far as I can tell, the clock thing was just made up by someone in this thread. I don’t think that’s an announced bullet point.
Doesn’t sound compelling to me. Without a cap, or without per game charges, maybe, for some people (maybe even me! I have great internet). But if you’re still paying for individual games, I want full, local control.
If you pay $60 for a game you own the license, if you happen to have a physical console you can just download and play it. The key to this whole thing is you don’t need a game console.
It’s not like having the physical copy of a game is insurance against loss of control anymore though. MS did something funny by allowing the original Xbox GTA San Andreas become backward compatible on the Xbone, but what it really does is download the 360 version if you install it (which I understand is a port of the mobile version of the game).
I’m not talking about physical copies. I just mean still being able to play if my WiFi is flaky or Xbox Live goes down or more than some time cap. I’m fine with those restrictions on a true Netflix model - I have both EA Access and Gamepass after all - but paying on top for individual games just rubs me the wrong way. I’m not buying any DLC for FH4, for instance, even though I bought them for FH3 as a standalone game.
It’s hard to visualize since it’s all just hypothetical services at this point, not sure if this will have an angle to appeal to the “hardcore” gamer (for lack of a better word). But then I didn’t think Game Pass looked interesting until they started releasing their first party games there day one, so hopefully there will be a hook.
Yes, of course, reliable low-latency internet access is required. If you don’t have that, you need to buy a console.
No data cap would also be helpful. According to that blog entry, the service is using 10 Mb/sec.
I got the impression this is aimed at mobile devices, not as a replacement for the console.
Yeah, a consistent low-latency 10Mbps sounds like a reasonable minimum requirement.
They’re targeting mobile rather than TVs or consoles because a) they’re wary of cannibalizing their existing business and b) everybody knows millenials don’t have TVs anyway, right? They just watch Netflix on their phone or maybe a hand-me-down Macbook Air.
I was thinking about this earlier today—the idea that this is for mobile, grab-and-go access to my console games, and I just have no idea why I would want that.
I say that as a Switch owner who does enjoy the freedom of lifting that out of the dock and playing it in bed, or on the couch in another room, or whatever, but that’s on hardware carefully designed to operate well as a handheld device in those situations, and I still don’t really take it “on the go” that much.
I can think of zero scenarios in which I want to play my PS4/Xbox games on my iPhone or iPad with a bluetooth controller (and, uh, less than zero scenarios in which I’d want to play it with any sort of on-screen touch controller).
Maybe kids want to play that way? Am I a grumpy old man already? I just can’t see where the majority of the console games I play would fit into my life if I suddenly had the “freedom” to play them with a much clunkier implementation of what the Switch pulls off.
If you’re old enough to have to ask, the answer is always ‘yes’.
Why don’t you want a gaming experience that’s centered on you? Clearly that’s what we’ve all been missing the last 50 years.
Has anyone mentioned that this allows Microsoft to get a cut of all the purchases and DLC that would’ve gone to Apple or Google (or Epic)? Kids might actually care about this too. Why play the crappy mobile PUBG when you can play the real thing? (Assuming the control scheme is just as good as mobile.)
I mean, that’s pretty close to possible with Steamlink or RemotePlay from PS4 right now.
I think it remains to be seen if they are able to actually get on the app stores for mobile. Apple blocked Steamlink, after all. They have historically been very hostile to anything that bypasses their payment system in the way you describe.
Exactly. It’s always been about the developers, the publishers, distributes and the media.
About time someone thought of the gamers.
With the possible end of Net Neutrality in the US, which console makers/streamers do you think will partner with which Internet providers? Will we start hearing messages like, “Subscribe to xCloud now exclusively on Spectrum”? Given the number of hours we play games, maybe the bandwidth used will eclipse YouTube/Netflix? Internet providers will start to complain.