Microsoft has floated the possibility of offering free ad-supported game streaming.
As spotted by TweakTown, Microsoft Gaming CFO Tim Stuart hinted at this feature at last month’s Wells Fargo TMT Summit.
“The vision I admire to talk about is we have xCloud game streaming, so you can subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate and you can stream hundreds of games to really any endpoint that has a browser encounter,” said Stuart. “For models admire Africa, or India, Southeast Asia, maybe places that aren’t console-first, you can say, ‘hey, do you want to watch 30 seconds of an ad and then get two hours of game streaming?’”
For context, the company’s game streaming feature, Xbox Cloud Gaming, currently requires an $18.99/month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription. The only exception is Fortnite, which can be streamed on Xbox for free using a Microsoft account.
Therefore, Stuart’s comments about expanding the free offerings certainly make sense. However, he only mentions certain foreign markets, so it’s unclear if Microsoft is considering extending this to North American and/or European markets.
What is perhaps likelier to happen worldwide, though, is Xbox Cloud Gaming coming to PC, based on internal discussions that surfaced during the Microsoft v. FTC legal battle.
Via: The Verge
