Microsoft head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, spoke broadly of Project xCloud at the opening of X019 in London this weekend, saying xCloud “extends the gameplay experience for our current customers.”
“As we set our goals for what xCloud would mean for us, we started with xCloud as something that extends the gameplay experience for our current customers,” Spencer said. “We didn’t talk about xCloud replacing your console experience. We didn’t talk about it replacing your PC experience. Rather, we said ‘If you’re playing your games on your console and you want to take those games with you, we have a way to do that.'”
Spencer continued to say that xCloud can mean many things to many different people.
“One of the things I’m really excited about this spring is once we talk about the geographic rollout of xCloud, you’re going to see it start coming to markets where there isn’t a real console installed base. You’re going to see it as a way for us to distribute great games to markets that these people know are franchises. They watch Twitch. They watch Mixer. They watch YouTube. They know the great games that everybody else is getting to play.
“There’s just not a market of gaming PCs or consoles in those markets, and we’ll be bringing xCloud to those markets this spring as well, which I think will just truly show the promise, not only of what streaming can do, but really the power of our creative community reaching more and more customers.”
At X019, Microsoft confirmed that Project xCloud will head to regions such as Canada, India, Japan and Western Europe in 2020.
“We think this really liberates the content from content being locked to one platform, one service and one controller,” Spencer continued, confirming that xCloud would support the PS4’s DualShock 4 controller. “It really allows gamers to choose how they want to play, where they want to play, how they want to acquire those games, and it’s all part of our strategy of putting the gamer at the centre of everything we do, building the game and community experience around them, and letting them make the choice on how they want to buy their games and how they want to play.”
Stay tuned for more from Phil Spencer — including exclusive content from a one-on-one interview with the head of Xbox himself — in the coming weeks.
Steve Wright attended X019 in London, England as a guest of Microsoft. Travel and accomodation were supplied by Microsoft.
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