Thurrott.com has posted an article detailing some really juicy insider info about Microsoft’s next-gen consoles. According to sources, MS is planning to release a cheap, streaming-only console utilizing the Cloud, alongside a traditional home console.
Journalist Brad Sams over at Microsoft-centric tech website Thurrott has broken the news today. Sams, a well reputed journalist with inside sources at Microsoft, is citing his sources while detailing what’s looking to be one of the defining moments in gaming medium in the coming years.
Microsoft is rumouredly planning to release not one, but two consoles as successors to the Xbox One X. This comes shortly after Xbox head Phil Spencer teased the next-gen Xbox family of consoles at this year’s E3. One of these next-gen consoles, which are code-named Scarlett, is going to be a traditional home console, just like most users are used to. It will feature local hardware, computing the game code and rendering it all on its own. Pretty standard stuff.
The fascinating portion is the second entry into the Scarlett familly of home devices. A significantly cheaper console, packing only some hardware. The main function of this device is going to stream games from the cloud. This means, that games will be rendered on Microsoft’s servers, stationed all around the world, and streamed as a video to the user at his home. The streaming console will receive controller input locally from players and send that information to servers where they will be processed. It will also handle some latency-critical game calculation locally, like collision detection but the bulk of the game will be rendered in the Cloud.
Why would Microsoft go this route one might ask, but the truth is, MS is actually late to the streaming party. Services like Geforce Now and Playstation Now have been doing pretty much the same thing for a couple years, and we also know that tech giant Google is working on a streaming console as well. Even non-hardware companies like Electronic Arts have announced plans for game streaming services.
What truly sets Microsoft’s approach apart, is that game streaming won’t be a niche extra service like Nvidia’s and Sony’s offerings, but will be a major focus for the coming Xbox generation. In offering a streaming console, which is likely going to cost “significantly less” than its old-school home console counterpart, Microsoft’s is enticing user bases with high bandwidth connections who’d rather spend the extra money of the console hardware on games or game subscriptions, and of course money conscious gamers.
How successful this streaming console is going to become in a world where even many first-world countries are having troubles with modern internet infrastructure remains to be seen. But it looks like the idea of streaming games will slowly but steadily take at least a good chunk of traditional consoles’ pie in the future.
