Following the release of the Xbox Series X, the studio still has quite a lot of irons in the fire. From the acquisition of Bethesda, to all of the upcoming triple-A titles releasing later this year, it seems Microsoft has a lot in store for its users. However, in spite of the still recent launch of the Xbox Series X, Head of Xbox Phil Spencer, has presumably set his sights on a comparatively new development in gaming.
Phil Spencer is one of the most important faces of Xbox. The head of Xbox has had his hand in nearly every part of the development of the Xbox Series X/S and has been with Microsoft for several decades. Now, Spencer has recently made some pretty bold claims regarding the future of cloud gaming.
In a recent video presentation, Spencer stated that in the future, developers could potentially be building cloud-based games first on platforms like Xbox Game Pass. Spencer cited the cloud's native hardware capabilities and the ability for developers to scale their games up and down. He went on to say that these cloud-based games could host hundreds of thousands of players at once and could potentially accomplish more than any local hardware could.
Despite Spencer's confidence in what he has to say, these claims seem rather ambitious, to say the least. It could just be due to the fact that cloud-based gaming services are still a relatively new concept, but within a couple of years, those claims could easily become more tangible. With the emergence of platforms like Amazon Luna and PlayStation Now, development for cloud-based games could become more commonplace.
Then again, the underwhelming launch of Google Stadia and its withering player base doesn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence. Even with such successful cloud-based gaming platforms like Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Now, it's almost hard to imagine those platforms being used for anything other than to stream older games on newer hardware, right now.
Having said all this, it's impossible to know what the landscape of cloud-based gaming services will look like in the future. If what Spencer says is true and studios are innately developing games on cloud platforms first, then it could potentially phase out console-based gaming entirely. In the past, Phil Spencer has expressed confidence in platforms like the xCloud, so what he says here does fall in line with his current thought process. Although, with the launch of the Xbox Series X still fresh in everyone's minds, those ambitions of cloud-based gaming seem somewhat far off.