At GDC 2019, gamers from all walks of life tuned in as the tech giant Google revealed its foray into the gaming world with its Google Stadia announcement, where the company went all in and boasted that Stadia would be more powerful than the Xbox One X and the PlayStation 4 Pro combined. Chief among those who tuned in is Phil Spencer, the head of the Xbox brand.

Spencer would go on to send out an e-mail to the company which addressed this announcement. This e-mail was shared by sources close to the company to Thurrott, in which Spencer declared Xbox would go big like Google did at GDC 2019 for the upcoming E3 event. For those who haven't been keeping up, this is not a new claim, as Xbox first declared it was going big at E3 after PlayStation opted out of the prestigious gaming event.

Instead of PlayStation this year, it seems Xbox will be going up against the heavily boasted Google Stadia. Many eyes are indubitably on this new streaming service, but Xbox has been working on a streaming platform of its own, Project xCloud. With many expecting this platform to be heavily showcased at E3 2019, it seems Xbox and Google are going to meet head-to-head in the game streaming race, a concept many consider to be the future of gaming.

Of course, there are still many unknown variables about Google Stadia and Project xCloud. And while Project xCloud is expected to be at E3 2019, many are also looking to Xbox to reveal exclusive games, perhaps new hardware, and more. Many will just have to wait until mid-June to see exactly how Xbox is going big and how it intends to execute its plans, but Spencer acknowledges these concepts in his e-mail, which follows.

We just wrapped up watching the Google announcement of Stadia as team here at GDC. Their announcement is validation of the path we embarked on two years ago..

Today we saw a big tech competitor enter the gaming market, and frame the necessary ingredients for success as Content, Community and Cloud. There were no big surprises in their announcement although I was impressed by their leveraging of YouTube, the use of Google Assistant and the new WiFi controller.

But I want get back to us, there has been really good work to get us to the position where we are poised to compete for 2 billion gamers across the planet. Google went big today and we have a couple of months until E3 when we will go big.

We have to stay agile and continue to build with our customer at the center. We have the content, community, cloud team and strategy, and as I’ve been saying for a while, it’s all about execution. This is even more true today.

Energizing times.

Phil

At the end of the day, all eyes are on Xbox to live up to the hype, as well as Google to deliver with its Google Stadia platform. Since the Stadia is set to release later this year, it's likely that more and more about each company's plans will be revealed sooner rather than later.

Source: Thurrott