Microsoft Project xCloud (Game Streaming), now offering Fortnite free without GPU membership

I tried Series Edge browser, it warned about using a supported browser version, then warned about no controller detected. I told it launch anyways. It errored out saying could not connect to server.

I uninstalled Fortnite locally, restarted the console, brought up Fortnite GameCard but only option presented was "Install All" with No Option for "Cloud Play".

Well, i am of the belief that if you can play it locally, it's the preferred way to play but still, then we know ;)
 


A puck like the older fire tv boxes I talked about oh so many times here .

Allows for a larger form factor with better cooling and allows it to exist away from the tv. The chromecasts google had for game streaming would over heat so this makes a lot of sense.
I'm off the opinion not worth releasing stick or tv app until the IQ of the stream is improved.
It's ok for mobile, but not for tv outside of quick test or ms rewards.
So hopefully E3 may hear its been improved.
 
I'm off the opinion not worth releasing stick or tv app until the IQ of the stream is improved.
It's ok for mobile, but not for tv outside of quick test or ms rewards.
So hopefully E3 may hear its been improved.

For many people a $50-$100 or even a free stick with the purchase of x amounts of game pass could be an affordable entry point vs a $300-$500 console.

For me this is great for trips to my vacation home in Florida. That way I just keep a puck there. Or if it allows streaming from my console I could stream games to another room that has the puck when my main tv is used for something else
 
For many people a $50-$100 or even a free stick with the purchase of x amounts of game pass could be an affordable entry point vs a $300-$500 console.

For me this is great for trips to my vacation home in Florida. That way I just keep a puck there. Or if it allows streaming from my console I could stream games to another room that has the puck when my main tv is used for something else
Don't misunderstand my overall view on tv streaming.
I'm all for it, stick, tv app, console app, apple tv, fire stick app.
I just don't think the current quality of the stream is adequate for actually seriously playing games on tv.
I have full confidence that they'll improve it, although no idea what timescale I'd put on it.
Just hopeful will be soon.
 
Don't misunderstand my overall view on tv streaming.
I'm all for it, stick, tv app, console app, apple tv, fire stick app.
I just don't think the current quality of the stream is adequate for actually seriously playing games on tv.
I have full confidence that they'll improve it, although no idea what timescale I'd put on it.
Just hopeful will be soon.

It will be interesting to me to see the hardware inside the puck and if it has the ability to do any post processing as we have seen them role out in some web browsers.

I don't think xcloud would be my preferred way to play on a tv (or really at all) but as a back up or a travel alternative I think its just fine and if this will typically be a fire stick / chrome cast replacement then I'm fine with that too. have a few older fire sticks that I can retire
 
It will be interesting to me to see the hardware inside the puck and if it has the ability to do any post processing as we have seen them role out in some web browsers.

I don't think xcloud would be my preferred way to play on a tv (or really at all) but as a back up or a travel alternative I think its just fine and if this will typically be a fire stick / chrome cast replacement then I'm fine with that too. have a few older fire sticks that I can retire

There's absolutely a future into an idea like that. MS is basically catering the market on multiple fronts (consoles, streaming, gamepass service, pc gaming). They seem to do very well on all fronts, considering.
 
There's absolutely a future into an idea like that. MS is basically catering the market on multiple fronts (consoles, streaming, gamepass service, pc gaming). They seem to do very well on all fronts, considering.

It also seems they are partnering with Samsung. So i wouldn't be surprised to see a big push this fall with xcloud on samsung tvs , phones , tablets and pcs. My question is if the tvs will be enough to run it on their own or there will a puck added to every tv type thing
 
It also seems they are partnering with Samsung. So i wouldn't be surprised to see a big push this fall with xcloud on samsung tvs , phones , tablets and pcs. My question is if the tvs will be enough to run it on their own or there will a puck added to every tv type thing

They have been partnering with Samsung since 2019 i think. The integration between Windows and Samsung devices has been improved alot since then, as is the general Android<>Windows integration. Their quite close if not matching to what mac and Idevices do these days.
But ye, MS is really improving alot on multiple fronts in the gaming sector. An impressive feat even though its a multi-trillion dollar company, they did much worse with the release of the OneS, Windows 8, windows phone etc days. They sure can if they push it.
 
They have been partnering with Samsung since 2019 i think. The integration between Windows and Samsung devices has been improved alot since then, as is the general Android<>Windows integration. Their quite close if not matching to what mac and Idevices do these days.
But ye, MS is really improving alot on multiple fronts in the gaming sector. An impressive feat even though its a multi-trillion dollar company, they did much worse with the release of the OneS, Windows 8, windows phone etc days. They sure can if they push it.
I know they have had past promotions with samsung but specifically for this. I think it could be a big push if game pass is on every tv sold world wide by samsung and the same on every samsung phone. There are some big games coming out this holiday and it could be a good way to get a lot of people to the platform
 
Yea , it was supposed to be out last year . I talked about it in 2020.

Yeah you basically described exactly what would be announced some days later. Anyway, isn't MS competing with its own (and other) console platforms with this? With this xcloud devices on a stick/build into tv's, everyone with a TV would practically have the console's games on their tv's.... Everywhere.
 
Yeah you basically described exactly what would be announced some days later. Anyway, isn't MS competing with its own (and other) console platforms with this? With this xcloud devices on a stick/build into tv's, everyone with a TV would practically have the console's games on their tv's.... Everywhere.

It's just expanding their market for gamepass.

Look , Microsoft doesn't make money selling xbox. They make money selling software and game pass. So at the end of the day they don't care if they sell you a $50 or whatever stick to buy game pass for or a $500 console. Not only that but the platform itself gets more enticing. More ways for people to buy in and buy up. So maybe have an xbox and get a stick so you can play in another room or when your on vacation or whatever. Perhaps you buy a stick to play some xbox games and then move onto a console. What ever it is as long as that sub money comes in for MS it's a win.

I do wonder if tv's will be good at running this natively. I know for stadia the chrome casts were having over heating problems. I think actually having the internal tv hardware doing this might be a bit to much on maybe all but the newer models. Also most people don't upgrade tvs for a decade or so. So this could easily attach to a bunch of existing tvs.

I'm excited to see exactly what is in this.
 
Interesting, Microsoft will be adding KBM support to Xbox Cloud streaming service on PC. Basically this will allow you to control streamed Console games with KBM.


Along with that, Microsoft is encouraging developers that release Xbox Console versions of games to start including KBM support in the Xbox version of their games. Increased compatibility with KBM support in Xbox Cloud Gaming on PC is apparently the carrot that they are using to try to get developers to include support of KBM in their Xbox Console version of their games.

“Xbox has been supporting keyboard and mouse for a few years now, and we’re working on adding it to streaming for PC users,” explains Morgan Brown, a software engineer on Microsoft’s Xbox game streaming team. “But you can start adding it to your game right now and your console keyboard and mouse users will appreciate it. It will light up in streaming once we’ve finished adding it.”

Interesting. If this actually works and developers actually start to include KBM support in all games that they release on Xbox, that would get me one step closer to potentially getting back into gaming on console. There's still other things that would need to happen, but that would be one major hurdle removed if it happened.

Regards,
SB
 
We are approaching a critical milestone here in which streaming will change gaming as we know it. Game development and the types of features that are released for games etc, all of it driven largely by console technology, largely because this was the single largest configuration of hardware to design games against. It has been like this for as long as I have been on this board. Even now we discuss the merits of Ray Tracing hardware on various chipsets and consoles, forgetting really the major driver for adoption is of course the single largest supported configuration.

Fast forward to today, and we are on a cusp of input devices and latency that can be played on any device anywhere with a good enough internet connection. The single largest configuration will be that of whatever they put on xcloud hardware. And that is a powerful idea, because many developers lamented leaving older platforms behind when moving forward, but cloud technology essentially leaves no one behind. As long as the cloud is being updated with hardware everyone moves with it. It's still a single configuration to develop against, and if MS is successful in bringing the latency down, and improving the experience, developers will be much happier to leave the past behind because there really is no loss for them.
 
MS is more and more merging PC/Xbox, its the way forward. its how i envisioned the future when the first Xbox launched which was very much like a PC. Play where-ever you want and how you want.
 
We are approaching a critical milestone here in which streaming will change gaming as we know it.
Sorry to be nitpick but it's what I do ;-). How will steaming change "gaming as know it"? Unless games streamed can deliver radically different gaming paradigms and experiences, streaming is the same games as we know them using different local hardware resources, i.e. a tiny puck and subscription is your gaming hardware.

Personally I think the big paradigm shift will be when streaming can leverage unused server capacity to deliver gaming experiences that consoles and PCs cannot deliver, which is the cloud promise Microsoft made back in 2012 for Xbox One but which I think most will agree was premature and not delivered. But it is a matter of time, and a matter of available untaped server resources, which seems a poor deployment/use of server hardware.

I'm not keen on eating more promises of "change gaming as we know it", I really want somebody to show something tangible.
 
Actually i can see Streaming taking the place of consoles for many people. Just a usb-stick that you plug in on the TV and you're good to go. For gaming-only purposes, why not?
 
Sorry to be nitpick but it's what I do ;-). How will steaming change "gaming as know it"? Unless games streamed can deliver radically different gaming paradigms and experiences, streaming is the same games as we know them using different local hardware resources, i.e. a tiny puck and subscription is your gaming hardware.

Personally I think the big paradigm shift will be when streaming can leverage unused server capacity to deliver gaming experiences that consoles and PCs cannot deliver, which is the cloud promise Microsoft made back in 2012 for Xbox One but which I think most will agree was premature and not delivered. But it is a matter of time, and a matter of available untaped server resources, which seems a poor deployment/use of server hardware.

I'm not keen on eating more promises of "change gaming as we know it", I really want somebody to show something tangible.
The shift is the amount of time for developers to adopt technology. The transitionary period between last gen and next gen can be shortened removing years of transitional titles that we are going through.

It would be like going back to the very early consoles titles in which a generation shift was hard felt and massive

So perhaps more apt to say; will change game development as we know it today.

Whether changing feature sets rapidly changes gaming has yet to be seen.

On the consumer side (us), it’s near instantaneous customer transition to next generation hardware without needing to fight for consoles, think about setups etc. there is definitely a streamlining of process and setups that could change the way games are made or even played.
 
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