Tech giant Microsoft has announced that their highly successful game subscription service Game Pass is heading towards PC. At the moment, only users of an Xbox One game console can enjoy the service. While the announcement was pretty clear, details when exactly gamers on PC can use the service was not shared.
Xbox One users have long been able to enjoy Xbox Game Pass and get access to a large library of games for a very affordable price of $9.99 a month. Undoubtedly, one of the biggest draws for the service is that all Xbox One exclusive games become instantly available for its subscribers.
Microsoft’s very own CEO Satya Nadella has let out the cat out of the bag during a conference call for the company’s earnings in the first quarter of 2019. You can listen to the whole call here, but be warned. It’s pretty dry and gaming is really only a tiny portion of the hour-long recording. You can skip to the 38:20 mark where Nadella is getting the question of game streaming.
This is the actual topic Nadella was inquired by an investor. Microsoft just recently unveiled their long-rumored plans of entering the game streaming business in a big way with the announcement of Project xCloud. The streaming service currently only known under this work-in-progress name is set to revolutionize the way audiences play games.
With a massive global infrastructure of servers, Microsoft – alongside with Google – are opportunely situated to achieve mainstream success by establishing streaming games online reliably and at a sufficent quality.
Xbox has the key gaming community [..] So, given that structural position, we’re going to make sure that we keep increasing the strength of the community. You see that already with Minecraft going to all platforms […] Obviously bringing the Game Pass to even the PC is going to be a big element of that. And then streaming is just a natural sequence of it. And the advantage we have with streaming is, we have a massive cloud advantage. – Satya Nadella, CEO Microsoft
Nadella answered the question by taking a step back and looking at the company’s big picture about interactive entertainment. Each individual gaming segment is going to play an important role of Microsoft achieving their goal. Game streaming is only one part of the puzzle. From their Xbox consoles, to juggernaut franchises like Minecraft, Nadella emphasizes the importance of having key gaming communities.
It’s along these lines where the CEO casually drops the confirmation that Game Pass is coming to PC. As it was only part of another question, we sadly don’t get any details on pricing, date and content but now that it’s basically official, we wouldn’t be surprised to learn more soon.
