Video games are many things, but for a while, mobile wasn’t one of them. Then, with the rise of the handhelds, we got to take our games on the go, but not our console games. That is, until the Nintendo Switch came along, and we could play major console titles almost anywhere in the world. Well, now, Microsoft has gotten in on the act in a different way via Project xCloud. A gaming service that will let you play games on any device that you want.
Here’s the official announcement from their blog:
Today, the games you play are very much dictated by the device you are using. Project xCloud’s state-of-the-art global game-streaming technology will offer you the freedom to play on the device you want without being locked to a particular device, empowering YOU, the gamers, to be at the center of your gaming experience.
They went on to discuss the number of games you could play:
Ultimately, Project xCloud is about providing gamers — whether they prefer console or PC — new choices in when and where they play, while giving mobile-only players access to worlds, characters and immersive stories they haven’t been able to experience before.
To realize this vision, we know we must make it easy for developers to bring their content to Project xCloud. Developers of the more than 3,000 games available on Xbox One today, and those building the thousands that are coming in the future, will be able to deploy and dramatically scale access to their games across all devices on Project xCloud with no additional work.
As for when you’ll be able to start using this…
Scaling and building out Project xCloud is a multi-year journey for us. We’ll begin public trials in 2019 so we can learn and scale with different volumes and locations. Our focus is on delivering an amazing added experience to existing Xbox players and on empowering developers to scale to hundreds of millions of new players across devices. Our goal with Project xCloud is to deliver a quality experience for all gamers on all devices that’s consistent with the speed and high-fidelity gamers experience and expect on their PCs and consoles.
This seems like something that could change the gaming world. But we’ll have to see.
