Microsoft is planning to stream PC cloud games, internal emails reveal
By Tom Warren, a senior editor covering Microsoft, PC gaming, console, and tech. He founded WinRumors, a site dedicated to Microsoft news, before joining The Verge in 2012.
Microsoft has been planning to stream PC games over the cloud, internal emails from the FTC v. Microsoft case show. Microsoft currently streams games through its Xbox Cloud Gaming service, but it’s limited to Xbox titles as the servers run specialized Xbox Series X chips. Microsoft has been working on leveraging its Azure servers to stream PC games over Xbox Cloud Gaming.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emailed Xbox chief Phil Spencer, Kareem Choudhry, head of cloud gaming at Microsoft, and Sarah Bond, head of Xbox creator experience, in July 2021 after rumors emerged of Google turning Stadia into a white-label cloud gaming service for developers to run their games on.
“Seems like they will have a leg up because their stuff is more generic Linux VMs + Network… But I am assuming we will do the same for Game Pass PC – right?” asked Nadella. Spencer was quick to respond in just over an hour to offer up his thoughts on Stadia and confirm that Microsoft is working on an Azure solution for streaming native PC games from the cloud.
“Google has the ability to reuse their Linux cloud hardware and yes as we stream PC native games from an Azure GPU SKU we would have more re-use scenarios to recoup costs,” said Spencer, referring to the ability to offer a similar white-label cloud gaming service to developers and publishers.
“Phil is correct. Sarah [Bond] and I in partnership with Jason’s [Zander] team are driving a suitable Azure SKU… as part of a series that will serve the customer demand we see externally for IAAS and to run our xCloud PC streaming stack,” said
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