Microsoft formally announces Project xCloud Game Streaming Service

Microsoft has finally unveiled their long-rumored game streaming aspirations with Project xCloud. The game streaming service aims to bring console-quality gaming to pretty much every platform, without the need of buying the actual console. Public trial tests will start as early as next year.

Playing games via the Cloud is a pretty old idea by now. Start-ups like Gaikai and OnLive promised the futuristic way to play games almost ten years ago but couldn’t achieve their lofty goals. Whether it was limited funding or the technical infrastructure just not being good enough at the time, neither of them really took off.

While OnLive went bankrupt, Gaikai was purchased by Sony and turned into PlayStation Now. Since 4 years now, subscribers of Sony’s PS Now can play a wide selection of PS2, PS3 and PS4 games on mobile devices, TV and PC. It was only a matter of time that Microsoft would jump in with their own cloud-based game streaming service.

We previously reported on Microsoft’s next-gen game consoles, code-named Scarlett. Supposedly, there will be a traditional home console after the Xbox One that plays games locally, but the more interesting part is a significantly cheaper streaming device which will use game streaming to enable a similar gameplay experience.

Project xCloud is looking to be exactly that. What makes Microsoft’s attempt at game streaming different is the enormous technical backbone by its Azure Server infrastructure, located in over 54 regions worldwide. Still, the tech giant is planning to release Project xCloud gradually after testing it first. Dedicated servers are already available in Washington, the home of Microsoft, but public tests will start next year.

If the tests are successful, Microsoft plans to expand the service increasingly by adding xCloud Blades into their existing servers worldwide. These blades are housing multiple Xbox One console stripped-down to the bare essentials and will do all the hard work while the output will be sent as a video stream to the user.

Stay tuned when more info on the public test for Project xCloud gets released in the coming months.