Full title: Microsoft’s recent decisions paint a clear picture — Xbox Cloud Gaming is no longer the future the company once promised. “I was recently told by Microsoft figures that, given compute demands for AI, Xbox Cloud Gaming is effectively losing money when used beyond 15 hours per month.”
I agree that subscribing to play games is losing more control than you already have lost before (with digital games only). But saying there is nothing in exchange for is a bit wrong to me. Cloud gaming can be useful in addition to what you have, depending on the circumstances. If I were on XBOX console, sure I don’t think streaming it to the console makes too much sense, unless the game does not run on it. Let’s say you have an old XBOX One and don’t want to buy new console or PC. Or you don’t have much SSD space on your little old PC drive left to install 200 GB. Streaming with XCloud cold be a solution depending on what game you play.
Or like in my situation, I have a Linux PC and could play games that are not playable on Linux. It’s not always just to replace local gaming entirely, I see it as an additional way to play (more) games. Also one could just subscribe for one or a few months only, not forever. Or for people who don’t even have a console, handheld or PC around (maybe in vacation in example) and could play for an hour on the smartphone connected to TV with gamepad. Just an idea. I don’t know if you read this comment, but my point is, that cloud gaming is not “in exchange for nothing”.
You can do all of those use cases, until the cloud company decides it’s more profitable to limit your access, drop your current game due to licensing, or change the pricing structure, etc.
You may be 75% through a game and be stuck because the new terms make it impossible to continue. You’re giving them money for a subscription but you have no assurances at all. Access, timing, licensing, ownership, support… You’re entirely at their mercy. You have nothing but hope that they’ll keep the same deal that you paid for, and no real recourse of they don’t.
That sounds like nothing to me.
Did you read through what I said? That can happen if you are solely relying on cloud gaming, but I made the argument you can have it in addition to other means of play.
Yes, but the other means of play you referred to are irrelevant to the discussion. You can supplement cloud gaming with whatever you want and it won’t change the arguments for/against cloud gaming itself.
It add value to the discussion and is not irrelevant. In fact I was arguing that your argument not to subscribe is invalid, IN the case if that is not the only means to play the games. If I have purchased a game to play native, then play it on cloud on another device in addition. That means if the cloud support stops, I don’t lose the access to play the game native. It is an additional way to play without losing anything. I was commenting on your original posting:
Subscribing to a cloud service will give you more options to play, not less. You get something in exchange, so your argumentation is invalid.