The FTC vs. Microsoft trial has a new chapter. Since the courtroom clash in July, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard extended their agreement to October 18 deadline to buy more time. Now, court documents leaked to the public reveal important insights into Microsoft’s future plans in the gaming industry.
As reported by The Verge, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discussed plans to offer PC games via Xbox Cloud Gaming with Xbox executives Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond, and Kareem Choudhry over email in 2021. It was a time when the now-defunct Google Stadia was a potential competitor, which Nadella brings up in the email chain.
“Seems like [Google] will have a leg up because their stuff is more generic Linux VMs + Network…. But I am assuming we will do the same for Game Pass PC–right?” Nadella asked.
Spencer summed up his thoughts on Stadia and confirmed that the team was working on a way to stream PC games using Azure, Microsoft’s own cloud platform. “From a cost to serve the generic point is right,” he told Nadella. “Google has the ability to reuse their Linux cloud hardware and yes as we stream PC native games from an Azure GPU SKU we would have more re-use scenarios to recoup costs.”
“Phil is correct. Sarah [Bond] and I in partnership with Jason’s [Zander] team are driving a suitable Azure SKU… as part of a series that will serve the customer demand we see externally for IAAS and to run our xCloud PC streaming stack,” Choudhry further explained.
Xbox Cloud Gaming already allows streaming for Xbox games, but not for PC games. While these emails prove that there were plans to stream PC games through Xbox Cloud Gaming, that might not necessarily be the case anymore. However, it’s still a believable plan based on Microsoft’s recent addition of keyboard and mouse support to Xbox Cloud Gaming.
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