Join The Community
More Project xCloud details are coming next month, and they may include a name for the game streaming service that is not "xCloud".
Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that xCloud's game streaming services will join the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription bundle in September at no additional cost. Xbox boss Phil Spencer confirmed in an interview with The Verge that the company plans to share more information about the service in the lead-up to that launch, and it sounds like it will have a lot more to share in August specifically.
While Microsoft has been calling its streaming efforts Project xCloud for years, that will soon change as well: "This isn’t the official name, but you should think about it as Game Pass streaming or Xbox streaming, something like that," Spencer said. "We actually don’t have the final name just yet, but it won’t be Project xCloud."
Spencer says the company has plans to gradually expand how it uses streaming on Xbox, as well as for playing games that you own but aren't part of the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. That includes using xCloud streaming to provide instant trials of games - which sounds a lot like something Google is aiming for with Stadia and YouTube, though it hasn't pulled it off yet.
"We want that trial to be as easy as it is in music and video today, where I can send you a track in Spotify today and you can stream it instantly," Spencer said. "Over time, anywhere I see a game I should be able to give it a try."
Read more about the future of Xbox with everything we know about Xbox Series X.
