With Xbox Cloud Gaming, Consoles Could Become A Thing Of The Past

thegamer.com:

The Cloud is something that many people never thought would really take off, but now we find ourselves relying on it daily. Whether you work across various devices and locations, or if you crash at the end of a long day to stream the latest shows on any of the vast choices of streaming platforms, cloud usage has become a part of normal, everyday life. It’s surpassed, and in many cases eradicated, its real-world physical alternatives. You don’t run out to buy a box set of the latest Marvel show when it’s waiting for you on Disney+. You don’t listen to albums on a stereo. Everything is cloud-based, digital, and technologically convenient.

While film, television, and music have all taken the plunge into full streaming services, cloud gaming is currently sitting on the verge of breakthrough. Many of us might not want to do away with the age of physical media, and we have seen more failures than success with cloud gaming so far, but it is the way things are going - and Microsoft is leading the charge.

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The biggest hurdle that currently stands in its way is that cloud gaming is much harder to get right than the previous formats. For a song, you just need to listen, and for a film, you just need to watch. For gaming, however, it needs to be rendered at a remote location, and has to use your input back and forth to make for a responsive and usual gaming experience. When this is done halfway across the world, it has to be done quickly, otherwise it becomes unplayable. We recently had a highly embarrassing example of it going wrong when Xbox users could not play games they already owned for 12 hours at the weekend, but these feel like teething