By<\/span> <\/span> Tom Warren<\/a><\/span>, a senior editor covering Microsoft, PC gaming, console, and tech. He founded WinRumors, a site dedicated to Microsoft news, before joining The Verge in 2012.<\/span><\/span><\/span>
Microsoft currently offers free access to Fortnite <\/em>on its Xbox Cloud Gaming service (xCloud), but there are signs the company may offer free game streaming in exchange for ads. Microsoft Gaming CFO Tim Stuart hinted at this prospect in a Wells Fargo TMT Summit<\/a> interview late last month, spotted by TweakTown<\/em><\/a>.
\u201cThe vision I like to talk about is we have xCloud game streaming, so you can subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate and you can stream hundreds of games to really any endpoint that has a browser experience,\u201d explained Stuart. \u201cFor models like Africa, or India, Southeast Asia, maybe places that aren\u2019t console-first, you can say, \u2018hey, do you want to watch 30 seconds of an ad and then get two hours of game streaming?\u2019\u201d
Stuart\u2019s spitballing makes it clear this is something that Microsoft has been looking at for certain regions, with Xbox Cloud Gaming having expanded to new markets<\/a> throughout 2022. An ad-supported version of Xbox Cloud Gaming could work well in markets where phone ownership is much higher than traditional consoles or gaming PCs.
It\u2019s not clear if Microsoft will ever launch such a subscription, though. Work on Xbox Cloud Gaming has slowed over the past year inside Microsoft,\u00a0sources told me earlier this year.<\/a> Microsoft was planning to support your existing game library by the end of 2022<\/a> in Xbox Cloud Gaming, but it never happened. Microsoft also\u00a0scrapped plans<\/a>\u00a0to launch a separate subscription version of Xbox Cloud Gaming, instead of the service being bundled with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
Microsoft has experimented with Xbox Cloud Gaming in the past, though. You can play Fortnite <\/em>for free<\/a> on the service, with just a Microsoft Account. This free access hasn\u2019t expanded to other games just yet though. It has been successful at marketing cloud gaming, as Microsoft revealed last year that more than 20 million people<\/a> have streamed games using Xbox Cloud Gaming, boosted by the Fortnite <\/em>addition.
Internal emails from the\u00a0FTC v. Microsoft<\/em>\u00a0case<\/a> also show that Microsoft has been planning to stream PC games<\/a> over the cloud, potentially opening up its Xbox Cloud Gaming service to many more games. Microsoft has also been testing mouse and keyboard support<\/a>\u00a0for Xbox Cloud Gaming, but only on the Xbox console side and not PC.
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By Tom Warren, a senior editor covering Microsoft, PC gaming, console, and tech. He founded WinRumors, a site dedicated to Microsoft news, before joining The Verge in 2012.Microsoft currently offers free access to Fortnite on its Xbox Cloud Gaming service (xCloud), but there are signs the company may offer free game streaming in exchange for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n