Microsoft has been releasing a series of Xbox-focused videos throughout GDC, and the latest one is all about the cloud. The company is looking to bring in big and small developers alike who are “ambitious and comfortable taking risks.”
That phrasing is taken from one of the slides in the new video, which introduces Xbox Game Studios’ cloud gaming organization. Senior director of cloud gaming Kim Swift explains that Microsoft is looking for both triple-A and indie game developers who are down to develop “cloud-native titles exclusively” for Xbox. As an incentive, Xbox Game Studios’ cloud tools offer AI and runtime calculators that operate apart from physical hardware. Essentially, a developer doesn’t need a top-of-the-line machine to make its game if it uses Microsoft’s cloud systems to do it all virtually.
As with previous GDC fireside chat videos, this is mainly directed at game developers rather than game players, but it’s still exciting to think about what creators could build with this experimental technology. Other videos from the series include Phil Spencer discussing Game Pass versus other business models and some stats about the all-you-can-play service. In the former, Spencer explained that Game Pass isn’t Xbox’s only strategy in the gaming market. In the latter, we learned that Game Pass members play more games, try more genres, and spend more money.
