Industry insiders are reporting to several news outlets that Microsoft is getting ready to announce a version of Xbox Cloud Gaming supported with ads, with some employees testing the service to play selected titles for free without having a Game Pass subscription.

According to The Verge, the new version of Cloud Gaming will allow users to stream games they own, alongside some eligible "Free Play Days" titles, letting users try out games over a weekend. The Verge's sources also claim that the testing currently has two minutes of preroll ads before the game is available to be streamed for free, with the current limit being allowing up 1 hour of streaming session, with the maximum being 5 hours per month.

This ad-support free version of Xbox Cloud Gaming will be available for PCs, Xbox devices as well as handheld devices, and through the web. with an apparent public beta about to be released soon, with a full launch in upcoming months after the public beta.

Source

 

[DeadSkullzJr]

If everyone here is smart, you guys and gals won't use this. Popularizing cloud is just going to knock physical media and installable digital media even further down on the totem pole. If your system can't run it, just deal with it, consider an upgrade in the future. BUT, also consider WHAT you are wanting to run, because most games these days are poorly coded anymore. Consider your options wisely, understand the costs. Lastly, keep in mind that you won't actually own any of the cloud content, nothing tangible will even be stored locally. DO NOT BE BLIND. The server will die one day, and that means ALL access to the cloud content will be gone, forever.

 

[ZeroT21]

People should complain because this is off the back of them raising their prices. It’s obvious what M$ is doing and it would be astonishing and idiotic if anyone doesn’t complain about this.

They deserve the hate. Especially whoever invented the concept of having ads puts on everything

 

[bonkmaykr]

This is a Certified Micro$oft Moment™

 

[RyanTheArchivist]

View attachment 531286​

Industry insiders are reporting to several news outlets that Microsoft is getting ready to announce a version of Xbox Cloud Gaming supported with ads, with some employees testing the service to play selected titles for free without having a Game Pass subscription.

According to The Verge, the new version of Cloud Gaming will allow users to stream games they own, alongside some eligible "Free Play Days" titles, letting users try out games over a weekend. The Verge's sources also claim that the testing currently has two minutes of preroll ads before the game is available to be streamed for free, with the current limit being allowing up 1 hour of streaming session, with the maximum being 5 hours per month.

This ad-support free version of Xbox Cloud Gaming will be available for PCs, Xbox devices as well as handheld devices, and through the web. with an apparent public beta about to be released soon, with a full launch in upcoming months after the public beta.

Source

So... they want to monetize demos?

 

[Bladexdsl]

imagine getting both buffering with cloud gaming and fucking ads while gaming! fuck both of them

 

[DeadSkullzJr]

imagine getting both buffering and fucking ads while gaming! fuck both of them

You get buffering, ads that may vary in time frame, multiple consecutive ads potentially (YouTube does it, as do many streaming services). You will get frame rates that won't be great due to the piss poor code many of these games are made with, constant internet requirement 24/7 (if your internet goes out or gets interrupted, guess who doesn't get to keep playing anything at all), a Microsoft account is needed, zero control at the hardware level. You are 100% at the mercy of Microsoft and their service. When the server is discontinued, you will lose EVERYTHING, including progress in all of your games. Just like you pay subscriptions to keep nothing, you pay time to keep nothing.

This also indirectly negatively impacts other factors along the way. Game play recordings for example, because you'll be recording ads along with the game play, which means even more direct advertisements, and annoyances for the viewer who can't skip those (unless the uploader is kind enough to stick video markers in place, meaning more time wasted for redundancies). This also makes streaming harder for streamers because now they are being hit double time, streaming their own feed AND cloud gaming, that's going to eat the bandwidth pretty hard, especially if you start doing high resolution streaming at specific frame rates. So unless you have money to toss around to somehow avoid most of these inconsistent issues, everyone is fucked.

 

[kingaz]

This isn't a Microsoft specific gripe per se, but I've been dreading the onset of cloud gaming as the default way to play all games instead of just live service titles. Not being able to install titles to a local machine to play offline, not being able to mod or otherwise tailor the experience to my liking, dealing with lag spikes and disconnects and being locked out of my games because the service decided to shit itself and die, having titles poof out of existence because a thousand VPs are fighting over every scrap of intellectual property, and on and on and on.

And of course it's a corporate ghoul's wet dream. You get to charge people for the same game over and over and over again, piracy becomes almost completely impossible, you can shove as many ads in there as you like, and you can merge and merge and merge until you've locked massive libraries behind paywalls you can price hike again and again and again.

The only saving grace is that telecoms are such dumpster fires themselves that they literally bottleneck the infrastructure needed to get this bullshit off the ground.

 

[Axido]

Me after reading the headline: Sounds interesting.

Me after reading the article: How did I, even if it was only for a split second, expect this to be anything other than a typical Microsoft fuckup?

 

[Kioku]

Me after reading the headline: Sounds interesting.

Me after reading the article: How did I, even if it was only for a split second, expect this to be anything other than a typical Microsoft fuckup?

Because they haven’t killed all your hope yet.

 

[lightwo]

Cloud Gaming: Consoomer Quick Fix Edition

 

[GengarsGhostlyGiggles]

ewww pls god no no no no no. no mobile bullshit in console games!

gaming is really gonna die with Gabe isn't it. too many non gamer blood sucking american corporate vampire skinsuit executives, who not only hate videogames they hate gamers!

 

[Deleted member 535703]

This is putting ads on streaming games you already own...the only "free" games are going to be a limited window probably like one free game a weekend and it won't be AAA quality that I can guarantee

You don’t even own them…

 

[x65943]

>free
>With ads

Remember, if something is "free", you are the product

 

[Axido]

Because they haven’t killed all your hope yet.

I wouldn't call it hope. It's more that I'm curious whether or not this company is able to get at least one thing right for once. They are messing up on all fronts (Windows, Office365, Edge, Azure, Bing, Copilot, Xbox... ), which in itself would be pretty entertaining if my job didn't involve working with their products. Anyway, you'd think that statistically they should have at least one decent business decision in between their streak of mismanagement once in a while, even if it's by accident.

 

[Deleted member 762014]

Microsoft:

 

[Eddypikachu]

This is actually pretty interesting ngl, being able to play a game for free with ads sounds like watching a movie reruns through cable, its alright but hey its free (Obviously not counting the price of cable/internet). And then if I do like the game I can just keep playing with the ads or buy it to remove the ads and internet requirement. I'd def try it if I get the chance

 

[DJ-Yoshiman]

I mean yeah free gaming and all you have to do is watch a few ads. People will still complain about this.

Of course it's free gaming. It's streaming your games you already purchased - they better be free to play. So it's nothing.

 

[Exnor]

Its official, MS has lost their damn minds

 

[Viri]

Here's a funny thought, I wonder if the ad time also consumes the game time? Is it actually 5 hours of game time, or 5 hours of game time + watching ad time?

It's not like it's injecting ads into games you play locally. I don't see the issue.

Please don't give them ideas...

This is actually pretty interesting ngl, being able to play a game for free with ads sounds like watching a movie reruns through cable, its alright but hey its free (Obviously not counting the price of cable/internet). And then if I do like the game I can just keep playing with the ads or buy it to remove the ads and internet requirement. I'd def try it if I get the chance

I think it's neat, but the amount of time makes it useless. GeForce Now is way more generous at their "free tier" than whatever this is.

Here's GeForce Now. It's pretty neat, and you can stream some of your Steam/Epic/Xbox games that you already own.

Spoiler

 

[Exnor]

>free
>With ads

Remember, if something is "free", you are the product

This ^^^^

Remember this people.