There’s no surprise that Microsoft is making great strides for Project xCloud, which benefits both gamer and developer communities worldwide.
Today, the Project xCloud team at Microsoft have announced the details of their plans for data centre deployment, current and upcoming developer tools, as well as the developers they’ve teamed up with to empower gamers to play the games they want, with the people they want, on the devices they want.
Learn more about what to expect from Project xCloud on the Xbox Wire or read on below to see the Microsoft’s post in full.
Project xCloud: More for Gamers and Developers
Last fall, Microsoft pulled back the curtain on Project xCloud – the company’s game-streaming technology. Their vision for Xbox is that you can play the games you want, with the people you want, on the devices you want. Project xCloud brings Microsoft closer to fully realizing that vision. Their teams around the globe have been hard at work, building out and testing the system. They recently rolled out an alpha version to Microsoft employees through their take home program and are using the feedback to make improvements, ensuring Project xCloud offers customers a great experience.
The driving purpose behind Project xCloud has been to enable playing great games anywhere, anytime. From the beginning, Microsoft’s aim has been seamless compatibility. The company wants to make it as easy as possible for developers to make their games available to all gamers with support for existing games, those currently in development, and future games.
The power of Project xCloud – the seamless compatibility for developers and the new places to play for gamers – comes from Azure datacenters spanning the globe, with hardware that shares a common set of components with Xbox consoles. Microsoft has already deployed custom Project xCloud blades to datacenters across 13 Azure regions with an initial emphasis on proximity to key game development centers in North America, Asia and Europe. Leading global development teams such as Capcom and Paradox Interactive now have the ability to easily test their games directly from Project xCloud without having to port to a new platform. This is just the beginning of the build-out, with the ultimate goal of supporting gamers in Azure regions around the world.
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.
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 the Project xCloud team do the work to make their games accessible to the broadest set of players possible.
Microsoft also recently added enhancements to their standard Xbox Developer Kit (XDK) to add support for streaming. One API is the new “IsStreaming” API which allows any game to know if it’s streaming from the cloud. Games can then cue features and functionality to enhance the streaming experience; for instance, adjusting font sizes for smaller displays or hosting multiplayer matches on a single server to reduce latency. The company will continue to look for ways to empower developers to tailor their games for the many ways their customers play.
Project xCloud is an exciting journey. Mirosoft and their Project xCloud team can’t wait to invite all of the community to provide feedback, help shape it and participate in development in a very open and transparent way.