Earlier this year, Microsoft had stated that their upcoming streaming service, Project xCloud, would be going into public trials this year.
They need to do some more testing before the release it to the world. Well, it looks like they’ve reached a milestone with the project. Recently the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, announced that the Project xCloud team had wrapped up their takehome release. Meaning, the team was able to play with the service in the comfort of their own homes.
Congrats to Project xCloud team for completing their takehome release. Excited to get feedback from our internal teams ahead of public trials later this year. pic.twitter.com/un1T8mg0d4
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) May 1, 2019
This is fantastic news indeed, as this is the first step before the public trials start. Once the internal team sorts through the collected feedback, it’s only a matter of time before we’ll be able to test out Project xCloud for ourselves. In fact, I suspect we may even hear about an announcement during E3 2019.
With Project xCloud, Microsoft will be in direct competition with multiple streaming services, as well as Google’s own upcoming service, Stadia. Being able to stream our existing Xbox games to mobile devices, as we saw during March 2019’s Inside Xbox is going to be amazing. If it’s done right, that is. That’s a door that’s about to become open to a huge number of gamers who don’t own an Xbox but want to try out the games available on the platform.
In case you haven’t noticed, the mobile gaming scene is vast. With both Android and iOS devices picking up a fair share of gamers who don’t have the time or don’t want to be bothered by the traditional console and PC gaming experience. Services like Project xCloud would allow those people to experience titles that they normally won’t have access to. Microsoft knows this and they also know there’s some untapped potential in this market.
E3 2019 is right around the corner and I suspect we’ll hear more during Microsoft’s E3 2019 conference.
