Assuming you have a stable connection and low latency, controller inputs are sent to the streaming Xbox console as the game downloads. In my tests, it takes around 10 seconds to load a game, which means you’re looking at the typical game intro videos before hitting the main menu. When you choose a game to play on Xbox Cloud Gaming, it sends a request to start the game on an available Xbox console that’s at the nearest Microsoft Azure server stack. I think the overall revenue grows, so 15 % of a bigger number is a bigger number, but we don’t have this future where I think 50 %, 60 %, 70 % of our revenue comes from subscriptions.Xbox Cloud Gaming works a lot like streaming video with some extra steps. Today, Game Pass, as an overall part of our content and service revenue, it’s probably 15 %. We don’t see subscription (growing bigger), unlike other forms of media, that have moved solely to a subscription business. Mainly, because at some point you’ve just reached everybody on console who wants to subscribe. On console, I’ve seen growth slow down on Game Pass. I think Satya Nadella (Microsoft’s CEO) in our earnings report yesterday talked about 130 % to 140 % year over year growth on PC, which is really where we’re focused. “Our last public number (for Game Pass) was 25 million subscribers. These are Phil’s thoughts on Game Pass in general: We also reported that Microsoft had missed their last sales goal for Xbox Game Pass in the most recent quarter. But giving customers choice, we found, is good business.”

I don’t have a vision where everybody’s on cloud, nobody’s buying a piece of hardware. And I think we just announced, we crossed 20 million people who have tried out cloud streaming. And giving the customer the choice, putting the customer at the center of our decision making, has led to more success for us. If you subscribe, you’re able to stream those games to any device with a web browser. We have a subscription, as you say, you can buy games, you can subscribe.

Xbox game pass streaming