Last year, Microsoft announced Project xCloud, their plan to bring console-quality gaming to any device. In a new article on Xbox Wire, Kareem Choudhry, Corporate Vice President of Gaming Cloud at Microsoft, provided an update on the status and capabilities of Project xCloud.
Here’s what Kareem had to say in the update on Project xCloud:
Today you can play three generations of amazing games on Xbox One. That means that Project xCloud has the technical capability to stream more than 3,500 games, without any changes or modifications required by a developer. In other words, developers will be able to dramatically scale their existing games across devices, with no additional development, no additional code base maintenance and no separate updates. When a developer updates the Xbox One version of their title, those updates will also apply to all versions available on Project xCloud without any additional work.
Project xCloud can stream more than 3,500 games, though that doesn’t necessarily mean those games will all be available to stream when the service first launches. Kareem also mentions that developers like Capcom and Paradox Interactive can begin testing the service, which has already been set up in 13 Azure regions.
There are currently more than 1,900 games in development for Xbox One, all of which could run on Project xCloud. Developers creating those games continue working normally – building with the tools they have – while we do the work to make their games accessible to the broadest set of players possible.
By reducing the amount of work developers have to do, it should be easier to get more games on the service. Another improvement coming is the “IsStreaming” API, an improvement to the Xbox Developer Kit (XDK) that allows games to automatically know they are being streamed.
The Xbox E3 2019 showcase is being held on June 9th at 4:00 p.m. EDT/1:00 p.m. PDT. It’s very possible that we will hear news on Project xCloud during this conference.
