The huge challenges Microsoft faces with 'XCloud' Xbox game streaming

Phil Spencer announces Xbox game streaming.

At E3 2022, Microsoft gaming pb Phil Spencer talked well-nigh bringing "console quality" Xbox game streaming to your devices, flanked by a large picture of a smartphone. Microsoft's current aims revolve around expanding the visitor'southward gaming reach beyond the Xbox console market, which seems to have effectively plateaued in recent years.

With game streaming, rumoured to be code named "XCloud," Microsoft aims to deliver your games to any device, streaming from the internet. Games volition offload expensive processing routines to external servers, sending the visual results to your devices, whether it's via a streaming stick continued to a Goggle box, or the low-powered smartphone in your pocket.

Microsoft has been working on these systems for years, all the mode back in the Xbox 360 era, where they reportedly demonstrated Halo 4 streaming to a Lumia handset, via the cloud. Several years later, though, Microsoft faces the same bug turning these promising features into a tangible production that it faced many years agone. I have no thought if Microsoft will succeed with XCloud, but they're far better placed than some of the other companies out there attempting similar things.

Here are some of the challenges Microsoft needs to overcome with its game streaming service.

Microsoft'south information centers spread beyond the globe.

Global internet speeds are gradually creeping up, but not as fast equally many of us probably expected dorsum then. Weak competition in the Usa, coupled with the (very probable) decease of net neutrality has seen internet speeds in Xbox's primary market remain pretty tepid, with the world'southward largest economic system languishing around the 20th spot on global net speed averages by country at effectually twenty MB/south. The U.k. struggles even more, on around xiv MB/south averages, with a broadband network held dorsum by ancient telephony infrastructure.

In other large markets, particularly developing ones like People's republic of china and Republic of india, internet speeds are far worse, at around 2 to eight MB/s, depending on the study. So yous really have to wonder just how far Microsoft can attain with this type of streaming service.

Video streaming services like Netflix do not take the same bug equally Xbox cloud streaming will have, since not but are you lot downloading visual data from the internet, only you're uploading your inputs and controls back up to Microsoft's servers. This creates uncanny latency bug, and while this wouldn't really bear on turn-based games like XCOM 2, you can pretty much forget playing Fortnite or Halo this way. Unless, of course, Microsoft has some tricks up its sleeve.

Information technology does seem that Microsoft is working on a half-way solution to solve the problems associated with game streaming latency. Some latency-sensitive aspects of your game volition exist handled by the local hardware, such as collision and movement, while non-gameplay essential visual information volition stream via the internet. Redmond has too been extremely aggressive setting up data centers all over the world to reduce the lag between client and server resulting from distance, likewise.

Ultimately, we just don't know how much bandwidth will be required to make this "console-quality" game streaming work, simply if Microsoft can pull it off, they volition have achieved something that other nascent game streaming services but couldn't.

Come across the spread of Microsoft's Azure platform

Relying on third-party ecosystems

Another hurdle Microsoft volition accept to overcome is the reliance on third-party ecosystems. With the death of Microsoft's phone arm, Microsoft will accept to depend on Google's Android and Apple's iOS to reach gamers on mobile platforms. It might have to even cross the bridge with Amazon too if it fancies getting Xbox game streaming on Amazon Burn Tv set boxes and dongles, and other TV manufacturers too.

While many of these won't be a problem for Redmond, Google has shown itself to be behave anti-competitively towards Microsoft. Google artificially hinders YouTube performance on competing browsers like Microsoft Border and Firefox, and has famously declined to make a beginning-party YouTube app all together for Windows platforms.

Xbox might have a YouTube TV app right at present, but I'd wager that'due south simply a instance of Google non having a huge presence on Boob tube right now, that could change in the hereafter, given how Google is aggressively seeking to get into the core gaming market. Thankfully, Android'south well-nigh-monopolistic position and the platform's selection nature should prevent Google from blocking any competing cloud streaming service on its Google Play app store. Google was recently slapped with a record-breaking fine in Europe for its practices on Android, and if Google failed to provide a decent reason to cake Xbox deject streaming on its mobile platforms, regulators might footstep in once again.

Apple tree'south iOS is a different suggestion. iOS is extremely popular and profitable for Apple tree, only information technology doesn't have a regulator-angering market share like Android does beyond the world. Apple has been known to block competing services from its App Shop, notoriously removing Steam Link, which allows you to access your Steam games over a home network. Microsoft however has a expert working human relationship with Apple tree these days, with both companies supporting each other's platforms in different ways. Microsoft shouldn't take any bug getting Xbox game streaming onto your iPad and iPhone, given the good relations it has with the company.

There are, however, other technical hurdles associated with game streaming that could hinder the potential "XCloud" could have.

Touch inputs suck

Any core gamer who has ever tried to game on a phone knows total well that touch controls are frustrating as hell. It doesn't affair the game, it doesn't matter if they have unique controls or features to make things easier. A controller is ALWAYS ameliorate, specially for Xbox games that are designed from the ground up with shoulder buttons, triggers, and other complex commands in mind.

That said, millions of people don't seem to care, and those users who are happy to struggle swiping around on Minecraft Pocket Edition, or getting destroyed in Fortnite for iPhone, are the gamers Microsoft is primarily targeting with this platform. That said, I for one am hoping Microsoft figures out some ways to make game streaming functional on smartphones for those of us who merely can't stand playing real-fourth dimension games with inaccurate on-screen controls.

Consoles similar the Nintendo Switch have solved the portable games riddle, placing real joysticks and tactile buttons either around or nether the display. In that location's no reason Microsoft, with its leading industrial blueprint teams, couldn't achieve something like. The Surface Become at x inches seems to exist the platonic candidate for some kind of Nintendo Switch-similar dock, with controls either side of the brandish. A company chosen Linx attempted something similar with its Vision 8 tablet back in the Windows 8.1 days. I've also heard some rumors that third-political party Xbox accompaniment makers might already be exploring some options with this sort of solution in mind.

Can they practice it?

Microsoft is better placed than most companies to pull this off. The visitor has incredible hardware pattern teams, industry-leading cloud infrastructure, and a huge amount of enquiry and evolution under its belt when information technology comes to delivering cloud-assisted services.

For Microsoft to accomplish the "next level" with its Xbox platform, they actually need to be able to reach gamers where they are, rather than where they wish they were. Microsoft isn't going to carelessness the concept of local hardware in the short term, or honestly, even in the long term. If Microsoft tin nail "XCloud," though, it'll potentially have access to hundreds of millions of new gamers information technology otherwise would never have, both via mobile devices, or far cheaper digital-only hardware that significant lower the cost of entry.

There are exciting times ahead either way, simply I for i am pretty confident in Microsoft to succeed here.

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