Microsoft is reportedly making a “Gaming Cloud” unit
Microsoft is reportedly making a “Gaming Cloud” unit
With the announcement that Microsoft acquired PlayFab in January, it seemed clear that Microsoft wanted to expand their presence in the gaming market, delivering cloud services, back-end technology and deliver on their promise to provide greater gaming experiences with support from the cloud. Remember Microsoft’s plans to utilise the cloud to offer better performance/visuals on their Xbox One consoles?Â
This week, Microsoft’s Phil Spencer stated on Twitter the following, giving a glimpse of how he sees cloud computing impact the future of gaming. Will latency tolerant workloads be offloaded to the cloud in future games?
  I think we’ll see the full spectrum from games that run 100% in the cloud streamed to any device to high-end games that run highly responsive compute locally while offloading heavy latency tolerant workloads to the cloud for incredible local results. Â
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According to a report from Bloomberg, Microsoft has created a new “Gaming Cloud” unit which will sit under the command of Kareem Choudhry, with the task of getting more game developers to make use of Microsoft’s cloud services while also creating new services which utilise their cloud infrastructure.Â
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It is also possible that Microsoft plans to extend their Game Pass system with an online component, delivering a cloud streaming service which is similar to PlayStation Now, allowing people to play their games without an expensive gaming PC or an Xbox One console.Â
Tying Xbox closely to Azure is something which Microsoft as a whole can use to add growth to their gaming division and Cloud services in a single swoop, with many popular titles like Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six: Siege already running on the platform. In our opinion, there will always be room for bespoke gaming hardware, regardless of how good cloud gaming can become, as there will always be a benefit of running a game locally, be it lower latency response or the addition of player choice, especially on PC. Â
You can join the discussion on Microsoft’s “Gaming Cloud” group on the OC3D Forums.Â