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

[Cyan]

That's certainly one danger of a streaming focused console.

As opposed to a traditional console where the gaming experience is consistent regardless of where a person hooks up the console and plays their games (on a farm miles away from a city versus in the heart of a large city, for example), a streaming only device is likely going to offer an extremely variable gaming experience depending on the location of the console, distance from the closest data center, console owners internet quality, etc.

While, the console maker (MS in this case) can put all kinds of warnings, etc. on the box stating the optimal conditions for a streaming box, it's still quite possible that someone might buy it without looking at that stuff (Grandpa getting a console for his grandkid's birthday, for example).

There's a fair bit of potential for negative press or negative word of mouth if someone gets one of these streaming consoles and has a bad or non-optimal experience. I'm certainly expecting reddit, twitter, etc. to have mini-explosions when/if MS releases a mainline streaming only console and people start to play games on it. Smaller players can get away with this as it's kind of expected that they're going to get stuff wrong. Expectations of an established player are going to be much higher. Especially if they release it as a mainline product (with associated advertising) versus something that is viewed as just an almost inconsequential side product (like Sony's PlayStation TV, for example).

Regards,
SB

playing with streaming, the word lag and this comes to mind

 

[cheapchips]

This chap sums up and shows some of the slides from the xCloud GDC presentation.

On top of games just working and being unaware that they're on xCloud, they also have adaptive control overlays, touch enabled menus and matchmaking cloud users together.

 

[Metal_Spirit]

This chap sums up and shows some of the slides from the xCloud GDC presentation.

On top of games just working and being unaware that they're on xCloud, they also have adaptive control overlays, touch enabled menus and matchmaking cloud users together.

Doesn´t that require that games are adapted and even thought to smarphones? If fonts are small even on a Big screen how will that pass to a smartphone? That requires UI's to adapted! Besides a controller has a total of of two analogs, one d-pad, four pressure sentive buttons, and four trigger buttons. Where will you place all of this on a small screen?
And don´t forget that fingers cover the screen. What's the use of these buttons beeing transparent when, with your fingers above them, you will not see what´s underneath them, and even the remaining area will be covered by the rest of the finger.

 

[Jay]

Doesn´t that require that games are adapted and even thought to smarphones? If fonts are small even on a Big screen how will that pass to a smartphone? That requires UI's to adapted! Besides a controller has a total of of two analogs, one d-pad, four pressure sentive buttons, and four trigger buttons. Where will you place all of this on a small screen?
And don´t forget that fingers cover the screen. What's the use of these buttons beeing transparent when, with your fingers above them, you will not see what´s underneath them, and even the remaining area will be covered by the rest of the finger.

From what I remember
Few levels of deployment:

1. just stream game as is, no changes or updates.
2. Add json file with custom controller layout to better suite device. Can't remember if this can use the different layouts at different times. Not all games use all buttons etc
3. code changes to use xcloud api font scaling and things like pinch to zoom, custom menu layout etc.

The point of transparent buttons is when your finger moves, remembering precisely where the buttons are on screen, bit different than when you have physical buttons.

 

[bgroovy]

Christ, the controls cover the entire screen.

 

[iroboto]

How else are players expected to play a game on a touch screen phone without a controller?

 

[mpg1]

I feel like there is a massive opportunity for someone to just build a good quality universal joycon-like device for smartphones....

 

[AlNom]

How else are players expected to play a game on a touch screen phone without a controller?

brb using imagination cuz no sticks?

 

[Tkumpathenurple]

Christ, the controls cover the entire screen.

How else are players expected to play a game on a touch screen phone without a controller?

It's the same using Remote Play without a DualShock 4 connected: shit. It'll do for some games here and there, but mostly you'll want to hook up a controller.

I don't know if connecting to a smartphone is possible with the XBoxOne controllers - to the best of my knowledge, they don't have Bluetooth or WiFi - but it'll probably be a standard feature of Scarlet/Anaconda controller.

 

[dobwal]

Newer design has Bluetooth.

 

[AzBat]

Development milestone..

https://twitter.com/x/status/1123381636370845696

Tommy McClain

 

[BRiT]

I'll emphasis some of the key points of the article inline...

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2019/05...or-gamers-and-developers/#ZvyRYKDjGgkg7mTD.99

Project xCloud: More for Gamers and Developers

Last fall, we pulled back the curtain on Project xCloud – our game-streaming technology. Our vision for Xbox is that you can play the games you want, with the people you want, on the devices you want. Project xCloud brings us closer to fully realizing that vision. Our teams around the globe have been hard at work, building out and testing the system. We recently rolled out an alpha version to Microsoft employees through our take home program and are using the feedback to make improvements, ensuring Project xCloud offers customers a great experience.

The driving purpose behind Project xCloud has been to enable playing great games anywhere, anytime. From the beginning, our aim has been seamless compatibility. We want to make it as easy as possible for developers to make their games available to all gamers with support for existing games, those currently in development, and future games.

The power of Project xCloud – the seamless compatibility for developers and the new places to play for gamers – comes from Azure datacenters spanning the globe, with hardware that shares a common set of components with our Xbox consoles. We’ve already deployed our custom Project xCloud blades to datacenters across 13 Azure regions with an initial emphasis on proximity to key game development centers in North America, Asia and Europe. Leading global development teams such as Capcom and Paradox Interactive now have the ability to easily test their games directly from Project xCloud without having to port to a new platform. This is just the beginning of our buildout, with our ultimate goal of supporting gamers in Azure regions around the world.

Today you can play three generations of amazing games on Xbox One. That means that Project xCloud has the technical capability to stream more than 3,500 games, without any changes or modifications required by a developer. In other words, developers will be able to dramatically scale their existing games across devices, with no additional development, no additional code base maintenance and no separate updates. When a developer updates the Xbox One version of their title, those updates will also apply to all versions available on Project xCloud without any additional work.

There are currently more than 1,900 games in development for Xbox One, all of which could run on Project xCloud. Developers creating those games continue working normally – building with the tools they have – while we do the work to make their games accessible to the broadest set of players possible.

We also recently added enhancements to our standard Xbox Developer Kit (XDK) to add support for streaming. One API we’re excited about is the new “IsStreaming” API which allows any game to know if it’s streaming from the cloud. Games can then cue features and functionality to enhance the streaming experience; for instance, adjusting font sizes for smaller displays or hosting multiplayer matches on a single server to reduce latency. We’ll continue to look for ways to empower developers to tailor their games for the many ways their customers play.

Project xCloud is an exciting journey that we are all on together. We can’t wait to invite the community to provide feedback, help us shape it and participate in development in a very open and transparent way. Stay tuned…

Thanx,

Kareem
( Kareem Choudhry, Corporate Vice President – Gaming Cloud at Microsoft )

 

[Jay]

To supplement the article

Assume isStreaming is just to allow the different overlays button mapping, hosting multyplayer matches on same blades will be intersting to hear how that works when matching up with non streaming player's, does the streamer get bias to help with their latency compared to other players location.

 

[Jay]

What's people's expectations for this year?

• Will MS limit games that are available to 60fps or ones that aren't latency sensitive?
• What about only allowing ones that have the onscreen pad layout customized?
• Only ones with stable framerate?
• Pricing model?

Regardless of what can be run, I think they should curate it so that initial impressions has the best chances of being ok.

 

[cheapchips]

What's people's expectations for this year?

• Will MS limit games that are available to 60fps or ones that aren't latency sensitive?
• What about only allowing ones that have the onscreen pad layout customized?
• Only ones with stable framerate?
• Pricing model?

Regardless of what can be run, I think they should curate it so that initial impressions has the best chances of being ok.

I'd expect them to sell it as Xbox without the box for people with an Xbox and those without an Xbox. Xbox!

(So runs everything)

 

[AzBat]

E3 hands-on...

At E3 2019, Microsoft had a demonstration booth set up where you could go hands-on with a small range of Xbox games, including Resident Evil 7, Halo 5, Gears of War, and Forza Horizon 4, among others. I decided to give Halo 5 a try, since it was, in my mind, the game that would most expose the latency on xCloud.

Talking to Kareem Choudary, CVP for Gaming Cloud at Microsoft, he noted that the demo stations were running through the Microsoft Theatre's WiFi to the nearest Azure data center, some four hundred miles away. No local-server tricks were going on here. This was a real product, running in real time. Although, of course, we have no idea how powerful the networking setup they were using in the Theatre is. The real magic is in the knowledge that the game I was playing was running on an xCloud blade server some four hundred miles away, in their West US data center. Whether or not that experience will translate to domestic home Xbox consoles using traditional home internet, I have absolutely no idea, besides blind hope. But what I experienced at E3 2019 made me incredibly excited about the mere possibility of having this, at home, on my own devices.

I played a 10-minute segment of one of Halo 5's early levels, up to the point you battle two Hunters for the first time. The lag was noticeable, but totally and completely playable, and more than adequate for an offline shooter. There were occasional instances of artifacting here and there, and you probably won't want to get competitive on it, but the audio delivery, the responsiveness of the controls, and the visuals were all incredibly impressive, vastly exceeding what I would ever have expected.

I thoroughly expected xCloud to be decent enough to play turn-based games like Darkest Dungeon or XCOM, or strategy titles like Surviving Mars where the action is easily paused for decision making. To be able to play an action-packed shooter like Halo 5, via the cloud, with adequate responsiveness is an impressive feat.

Now, as I noted, you could certainly tell you were playing over an internet connection. It seems Microsoft has yet to figure out how to circumvent the laws of physics to that end. But if I were to compare the latency, it was far less aggressive than simply turning off "Game Mode" on my QLED TV. Aiming and trigger pulls were right where you'd need them to be, responsive, and precise. I had wondered if the more difficult fight against the Hunters in that early Halo 5 segment would have been tough to get through on xCloud, but nope, getting around the back and popping precise shots into the orange wormy weak points was a breeze. Quite truly, I was left stunned.

While I had faith Microsoft wouldn't pursue this stuff unless it was a genuine possibility, actually getting my hands on it and experiencing xCloud for myself has made me a true believer.

What was quite apparent from my hands-on with xCloud was just how relatively early it still is, and how far from being a packageable product is potentially is. There wasn't an interface that I could find in the demo units (probably locked out). There's very little information on final branding, final pricing, the differences between Project xCloud and the personal Xbox game streaming Microsoft announced at E3 2019. If Google Stadia is Microsoft's primary competitor here, Stadia does seem to have more of the finer product details locked down.

The biggest issue for me, by far though, was the very flimsy accessories on offer to connect Xbox controllers up to the demo phones. Microsoft is a billion dollar company, trillion dollars depending on stock fluctuations, and it is slightly concerning that the best they could conjure up for docking a smartphone with an Xbox controller is what amounted to a cheap frame someone ran off a hobby 3D printer. If there was ever a case for a real Xbox handheld device, xCloud is it.

Even in the Project xCloud booth, which showcased games running on various types of devices, showed the disconnect between the controller and the phones and tablets running xCloud. The lack of decent accessories may become xCloud's biggest pitfall here, particularly if Microsoft relies on shoddy third-party accessories as it did at its demo booth. Microsoft has the talent and industrial design knowledge in house to rectify this problem, and rectify it fast. So, here's hoping they do.

Project xCloud will begin rolling out for testers later this year, as Microsoft ramps up the service to every Azure data center across the globe. There are plenty of unanswered questions: pricing, data use, game library size, interface, accessories, and so on. However, the core meat of the product seems to be the real deal. If Microsoft hammers down the finer points xCloud needs to support it, they could be at the forefront of a huge gaming paradigm shift. It almost seems like a bit of a Holy Grail: your games on any device, anywhere, any time. As long as you have decent unmetered internet, that is.

https://www.windowscentral.com/i-tried-project-xcloud-xboxs-e3-2019-show-it-real-it-insane

Tommy McClain

 

[cheapchips]

The free remote play snippet was interesting. I wonder how the performance will compare to xCloud proper.

Edit: I'm sure they implied it was also running via Azure. It made me think that they're already broadcasting / recording to Azure from the console and they're probably just building on that infrastructure.

 

[bgroovy]

Edit: I'm sure they implied it was also running via Azure. It made me think that they're already broadcasting / recording to Azure from the console and they're probably just building on that infrastructure.

They did not. They simply implied their version of remote play borrows from the same tech as xCloud the way Sony said remote play used gaikai tech. Logically, routing console streaming through an intermediate server in the cloud would be a worse experience than simply allowing the traffic to go from the console to the client directly.

Actually, it's kinda shocking they said so little about xCloud in the press conference after a year of telling people to look forward to today for more details. All they've done is finally announce plans to match a feature PlayStation has been offering for 12 years that has no real relation to xCloud.

 

[BRiT]

They said they had a lot more content they wanted to present but didnt have enough time, so they were pairing things down. I'm sure they will talk substantially more on their Daily Xbox E3 Shows during the week.

 

[Jay]

They did not. They simply implied their version of remote play borrows from the same tech as xCloud the way Sony said remote play used gaikai tech. Logically, routing console streaming through an intermediate server in the cloud would be a worse experience than simply allowing the traffic to go from the console to the client directly.

Actually, it's kinda shocking they said so little about xCloud in the press conference after a year of telling people to look forward to today for more details. All they've done is finally announce plans to match a feature PlayStation has been offering for 12 years that has no real relation to xCloud.

Your probably right, but when I heard using xcloud tech I attributed it to the new xcloud API so would give onscreen controller layouts and customizations.

I think I heard what I expected and maybe not what was actually said? I would need to go re-watch that bit, but I have no intention of wasting my time.