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Windows Central Rumor: Cheaper Cloud-Only GamePass Tier & Family Sharing Coming, No Ad-Supported Tier Currently Planned

lh032

I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
Cloud AND ads ?!

Sheet GIF
 

Quasicat

Member
I dropped Ultimate this past week due to the increase and the fact that I only use it for the cloud service when I cannot use the TV. A cloud only tier for the games I’ve purchased would be amazing for me to jump back in.
 

KungFucius

King Snowflake
Yea what's weird is I already thought this was a done deal. My guess is they were hoping to be able to purchase the rights from Ubisoft and Ubisoft is playing hardball because they know they can.
I don't know how the right to stream something the consumer already bought is held hostage by some bullshit rights. If I paid for it I should be able to play it any way I want. It's bad for the consumer. It is also stupid because it makes titles less attractive to some potential customers.

In most cases this is what these asshole publishers are blocking or demanding money for. I own a game and have it installed on my PC downstairs. They want money so someone who charges me 10-20 bucks a month to stream games can stream this game to my upstairs TV. Assholes.

My guess is that stores like Steam and Apple just made everyone a fucking cunt. If steam charges 30% They think they should get a cut from someone trying to allow customers to get a little more value from their purchase instead of simply respecting their customers.
 

MayauMiao

Member
I don't understand why they are suddenly relying so heavily on the Xcloud. The service has been on the same spot for years and is the worst way to play games through streaming. They need to start updating it at some stage...

Microsoft can't sell enough Xbox to make money. Now desperate pulling a Stadia to get more people to sign up given the Xbox Gamepass stagnation.

Xbox is screwed.
 
I can see the cloud only option being interesting for people that purchase the service specifically to stream (the other plans seem a little expensive for that). The big get would be allowing games you own to be on there, that's huge for players that want a title or two not included. They've been talking about that for an awfully long time at this point.
 

Haint

Member
Doesn't even make sense, Xcloud streaming is BY FAR the most expensive operational cost of Ultimate as MS has to buy/maintain your hardware for you, and pay for constant ultra high bandwidth every second you play. To actually be successful at cloud they'll ultimately have to buy farms of ultra high end PCs capable of running every game at 120-240+ FPS to counteract lag.

How and why in the flying fuck could that be cheaper than people buying their own hardware and subsidizing it further by buying oodles of accessories, and games/movies/shit off the Xbox store? That's some bizarro land inverted reality shit.
 
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MayauMiao

Member
Doesn't even make sense, Xcloud streaming is BY FAR the most expensive operational cost of Ultimate as MS has to buy/maintain your hardware for you, and pay for constant ultra high bandwidth every second you play.

How and why in the flying fuck could that be cheaper than people buying their own hardware and subsidizing it further by buying oodles of accessories, and games/movies/shit off the Xbox store? That's some bizarro land inverted reality shit.

Its cheap in order to get people subscribe to the service.

After a year or so, MS will announce Xcloud price to go up to.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Doesn't even make sense, Xcloud streaming is BY FAR the most expensive operational cost of Ultimate as MS has to buy/maintain your hardware for you, and pay for constant ultra high bandwidth every second you play. To actually be successful at cloud they'll ultimately have to buy farms of ultra high end PCs capable of running every game at 120-240+ FPS to counteract lag.

How and why in the flying fuck could that be cheaper than people buying their own hardware and subsidizing it further by buying oodles of accessories, and games/movies/shit off the Xbox store? That's some bizarro land inverted reality shit.

Xcloud runs on Series X hardware running multiple instances of Series S spec versions of games on every single one. I reckon it's cheaper for them than we may think.
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
Ron Burgundy Anchorman GIF by Ben L



Cheaper cloud only plans, family sharing and no ad-supported plans are positive things .. no ?
They use the new Standard plan as a target to shit on MS when it... literally doesn't have anything wrong... But well, you can expect whatever from these people I guess, they need drama because playing games seems kinda boring or something
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
How would an ad-based tier work? Going to interrupt your game for a Dominoes pizza commercial?
Potential fuckery ideas:

- Create long queue lines and show you ads while you wait. "Your call is very important to us" vibes.
- Show ads while you wait in the lobby to match with other players in multiplayer games.
- Show ads before you start the game.
- Pausing your game to show ads after a certain time, say, every 30 or 60 minutes.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Potential fuckery ideas:

- Create long queue lines and show you ads while you wait. "Your call is very important to us" vibes.
- Show ads while you wait in the lobby to match with other players in multiplayer games.
- Show ads before you start the game.
- Pausing your game to show ads after a certain time, say, every 30 or 60 minutes.


Never gonna work for MP games. The other 3 are possible, but the 4th point just won't work. It's not a passive medium like a netflix movie that you can show an ad in the middle and get away with.
 
x1

Topher

Identifies as young
I feel like ive been waiting years for a family plan!

It's really simple. First....find a woman.....

Potential fuckery ideas:

- Create long queue lines and show you ads while you wait. "Your call is very important to us" vibes.
- Show ads while you wait in the lobby to match with other players in multiplayer games.
- Show ads before you start the game.
- Pausing your game to show ads after a certain time, say, every 30 or 60 minutes.

Microsoft reading this...

Fail Seth Meyers GIF by Late Night with Seth Meyers
 

Three

Member
They use the new Standard plan as a target to shit on MS when it... literally doesn't have anything wrong...
You think now forcing you to pay for online you might not need, getting rid of day one and charging 36% more "doesn't have anything wrong"?
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Adverts are already there tbh - this week I've seen McDonalds and Adidas on that bottom right tile on the dash.
 

Astray

Member
Cloud-only tier was a no-brainer move BEFORE the Fire Stick thing was announced. Also that family tier has been mooted for a while and even tested, why us it still rumored? Either do it or don't.

Xbox needs new execs.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
Never gonna work for MP games. The other 3 are possible, but the 4th point just won't work. It's not a passive medium like a netflix movie that you can show an ad in the middle and get away with.
While I agree about the pissing off and backlash, think about it. The end goal is engagement. How does one monetize engagement with ads?

I think the 4th one may actually end up being one of the first experimentations of the ad-based tier. Executives think about money first and foremost, and this interval-based ads is exactly how the advertisement industry has worked since forever.

#4 wouldn't really surprise me.
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
You think now forcing you to pay for online you might not need, getting rid of day one and charging 36% more "doesn't have anything wrong"?
They're not forcing you, they give you options, you don't like it? You don't use it, their loss probably tho, but that's how things work
 

Three

Member
They're not forcing you, they give you options, you don't like it? You don't use it, their loss probably tho, but that's how things work
They removed the option that was $4 cheaper, had day 1 games and now you can't choose to not pay for online multiplayer. How is that giving you options? Bizarre defence of the price hikes.
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
They removed the option that was $4 cheaper, had day 1 games and now you can't choose to not pay for online multiplayer. How is that giving you options? Bizarre defence of the price hikes.
That's because they need to raise prices and can't do so without providing additional value or else people would be complaining even more lol, if anything raising the prices is what I'd consider shit yet expected but imo they give you enough options to pick, you just pick the cheapest one and be done with it or go buy the games... I'm probably gonna play the games I want to play from there and turn off auto-payment
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
I've just been using remote play from my console to stream games in my library. A lot of the time it's a better experience to remote play from console than to play via cloud gaming.
 

Blessed beard

Neo Member
I don't understand why they are suddenly relying so heavily on the Xcloud. The service has been on the same spot for years and is the worst way to play games through streaming. They need to start updating it at some stage...
Agreed.if they are going to focus on cloud gaming more then they need to bring the level of quality up to match playstation,geforce now or stadia.
I have used them all quite extensively and you can see the digital foundry video for a comparison
Xcloud is much worse than all of those and is massively compromised in terms of image quality so why would anybody choose to play games that way?
If they want to go that route they need to actually invest some of the money into it.
That means actually buying capable rigs for streaming not streaming multiple series S versions of games from one series X rig.
 
How would an ad-based tier work? Going to interrupt your game for a Dominoes pizza commercial?

Good question. Multiple different implementations I can think of, depending on genre and gametype.

Dynamic pause in singleplayer games > ad for 60 secs > resume game. Example, going into menu explanation in Elden Ring to pause it > ad > resume game.

Ad during lobby sessions in multiplayer games, before and after a session. Not during gameplay.
 
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