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Don’t expect Microsoft’s Project xCloud to get exclusive games

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Microsoft Shows Off xCloud Hardware And Talks Streaming Business

Google Stadia is now available to those with the Founder’s Edition and Premiere Edition bundles, and it includes one exclusive at launch: Gylt. With an internal studio working on projects, that number will surely grow over time, but it appears Microsoft will not be taking the same approach with Project xCloud.

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Speaking to Gamasutra, an Xbox spokesperson said that currently has “no plans for cloud-exclusive content.” This statement was made after xCloud vice president Kareem Choudry previously said that it was in “early talks” with companies regarding exclusives.

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Releasing exclusive games on the service would certainly be out of line with the company’s messaging regarding xCloud thus far. Microsoft has positioned the service as a “different form factor” for existing Xbox games, giving players the option to play them on the go with a mobile phone, laptop, or other devices instead of being locked to their console or PC at home. The goal doesn’t appear to be replacing the traditional console, either, as Microsoft is planning to launch its Xbox Scarlett system in 2020.

Project xCloud running on Android phone
Mark Knapp/Digital Trends

Microsoft has moved away from true exclusive games this generation, altogether. With a few exceptions, including Halo 5: Guardians, nearly every Xbox One game is also available to play on PC. This includes Sunset Overdrive, Gears 5, Forza Horizon 4, and many more. The plus-side to this is that many also support cross-buy and cross-save, so you can easily move between console and PC, and enjoy the games with friends who might only own one or the other.

Through streaming, Microsoft is also letting Xbox One owners stream games to their mobile devices with their home console acting as the server. This can be done at no extra charge, and all of the games they own on the Xbox One are eligible for streaming.

There will certainly be plenty to play on Xbox — and xCloud — in the future, as Microsoft has increased its internal development studios with the acquisitions of companies like Ninja Theory, Playground Games, and Obsidian Entertainment. Others, including The Coalition and 343 Industries, continue work on upcoming projects, as well, such as Xbox Scarlett launch title Halo Infinite and the strategy game Gears Tactics.

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Gabe Gurwin
Gabe Gurwin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
One of Game Pass’ best titles leaves PC on August 15 and you don’t want to miss it
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While Xbox Game Pass frequently adds new games to its library, some titles do leave the service every fifteen days. Sometimes, those games are fantastic and PC Game Pass will lose a heavy hitter on August 15: Death Stranding. If you aren't familiar with this game, it, ironically, is a PlayStation console exclusive that's part of Microsoft's subscription service only on PC. Death Stranding first released on PS4 in November 2019 and tells a story about a man who is trying to reconnect a post-apocalyptic while dealing with lots of supernatural threats along the way.

It didn't come to PC until July 2020, before that was followed by Death Stranding: Director's Cut for PC and PS5 in the following years. The version of the game that's available through Xbox Game Pass is based on the July 2020 PC release, although it only came to PC Game Pass in August 2022. After a year on Microsoft's subscription service, the deal is up, and it's going to leave on August 15. Death Stranding is a game with a very compelling and socially relevant story and gameplay not quite like anything out there, so Game Pass subscribers who haven't tried this game yet need to before it leaves the service soon. 
It's all connected
Death Stranding follows the journey of Sam Porter Bridges, the adopted son of the President of the United Cities of America, as he attempts to reconnect what's left of America with a Chiral Network and save his sister. Of course, this game has Kojima's signature eccentricity, as Sam also carries around and starts forming a deeper connection with a baby in a pod (called a BB) that helps him avoid deadly creatures called BTs and gives him visions of a mysterious figure played by Mads Mikkelsen. On that note, Death Stranding has a stacked Hollywood cast as it stars people like Norman Reedus, Lea Seydoux, and Margaret Qualley and features characters modeled after Lindsay Wagner, Guillermo del Toro, Nicolas Winding Refn, and more. 
I'm not a huge fan of this game's melodramatic dialogue exchanges and arduous pacing that leaves a lot of the most interesting reveals for the end. Still, it undeniably has some prescient themes about how important connection is, something that became even more apparent and relevant in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Few video game writers can craft narratives that are as engaging and memorable as the ones in Hideo Kojima's games. Though what I like most about Death Stranding is its gameplay, which isn't quite like anything that came out before or since. 
For the most part, Death Stranding is a game about delivering packages. It initially seemed like a shocking change in style for the man behind the Metal Gear Solid series, but the connections become a bit clearer to me as I had to stealthily avoid BTs and saw the Metal Gear Solid V-level of freedom the game gives players in making deliveries. To maximize profits from deliveries, I have to balance all of the packages in Sam's possession, keeping a close eye on the terrain, and finding the best ways to get Sam to his destination without damaging much of the goods he's carrying.

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Humble Games held its first gaming showcase today, and presented a variety of gorgeous-looking, diverse set of indie games, with a particular highlight being the reveal of Wizard of Legend 2. 

The original Wizard of Legend is an intense magic-bit roguelike created by Contingent99 and Humble Games in 2018. Its sequel, aptly titled Wizard of Legend 2, has upgraded visually from pixel art to a silky smooth isometric 3D look that still captures the intense pace from the original.
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The United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) delivered a shocker this week when it blocked Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard on Wednesday. While a lot of focus on Microsoft’s fight was centered around whether or not the acquisition would give Xbox consoles an unfair advantage over PlayStation consoles, what ultimately decided it was a much smaller market: cloud gaming.
The idea of being able to stream the game you’re playing from the cloud has existed for well over a decade. Cloud gaming’s relevance to the video game industry has only grown over the past several years thanks to both failed and successful efforts from big tech companies like Google, Amazon, and, most importantly, Microsoft. Still, cloud gaming is considered relatively niche, with Activision Blizzard Bobby Kotick calling it "inconsequential" in an interview with Bloomberg and UCL Associate Profession Joost Rietveld saying it’s not a distinct market in a submission to the CMA.
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Microsoft, king of cloud gaming
Cloud gaming may sound like a niche within the industry, but that's not entirely accurate. BrandFinance Managing Director Laurence Newell tells Digital Trends that “cloud-based services account for over 70% of Microsoft’s brand value, amounting to a staggering $137.5 billion.” That’s quite an eye-catching number that understandably would raise a regulator's alarm bells. However, Newell admits that gaming only makes up 8.5% of Microsoft’s revenue, and cloud gaming is an even smaller amount of that slice.
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Despite the shutdown of Google Stadia and the relatively small brand value received from cloud gaming compared to the rest of the company, the CMA still points out in the press release about its decision that “monthly active users in the U.K. more than tripled from the start of 2021 to the end of 2022. It is forecast to be worth up to 11 billion British pounds globally and 1 billion pounds in the U.K. by 2026.” Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the UCL School of Management Joost Rietveld, who has also been a consultant for Microsoft during its acquisition process, challenges the notion that cloud gaming as a whole is a single market.
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“Arguable” stands out as the keyword to me here. Like any emergent technology, we’re heavily debating the positives and negatives of cloud gaming, specifically through the lens of this acquisition. But what exactly is it that the CMA sees in Microsoft that worries them?
The CMA’s problem with Microsoft
“The CMA’s argument is not that acquiring Activision Blizzard would allow Microsoft to dominate the console market as a whole, where Sony and Nintendo have strong positions relative to Xbox, but only that it would help it to achieve a dominant position in cloud gaming specifically,” Bailey tells Digital Trends. “Microsoft and Activision Blizzard will likely argue that this is disproportionate, given the relatively small scale of the cloud gaming market.”

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