On its 20th anniversary, and with over 100 million players to brag about, Xbox is clear about the future of video games in general, and of Microsoft in particular. With Game Pass as a flagship from which even competitors who until very recently refused to experiment with this type of service have borrowed ideas, the company has revealed what can be expected from the future of video games, at least as regards to Xbox. And it’s very simple: play in the cloud.
After turning the industry upside down with its popular subscription service, console-free gaming is its next step. In addition to expanding to new countries starting today, such as Argentina and New Zealand, Xbox has announced an agreement with Samsung that will allow hundreds of titles to be played on their televisions and without a console.
A year agoXbox announced the possibility of play not only on consoles and PCs, but also on other devices such as tablets and smart TVs. Actually, on any device with an internet connection. A previous agreement between the two companies allowed cloud gaming to be brought to Samsung Galaxy mobiles, but as of June 30, more than a hundred Game Pass titles will be playable on Samsung televisions from 2022, including Microsoft games in the release day and, of course, ‘Fortnite’ without a subscription.
It will be done through an app that will lead to logging into the user’s Game Pass Ultimate account that allows the game in the cloud. The games can be controlled, as on a console, with the different Xbox controllers (including the Elite Series 2) or even with the Playstation 5 DualSense. At the moment, Xbox has not announced specific models of Samsung televisions where it will work, or if it will work on some Smart TV Samsung before this year (although the expression they have used in the announcement “2022 and later televisions” seems to indicate that they do not), nor if Microsoft is in talks with other brands to extend this milestone.
Also in Edge
This firm commitment to cloud gaming does not stay with Samsung televisions. There will also be changes that directly affect Microsoft’s browser, Edge, and Windows 11. In the case of the operating system we will have optimizations to improve latency, a new HDR device calibration tooland widget of Game Pass that will facilitate access to games and a control bar which includes shortcuts to launchers of games and access the game in the cloud without the need for a mouse and keyboard.
As for Edge, there are a number of new features that will come to the desktop version of the browser in the future. These developments are summarized in a new home page personalized and game-related content, visual improvements to optimize the gaming experience from Edge, direct access to classic operating system and efficiency improvements in Windows 10 and 11.
In addition, there are news related to Xbox Game Pass that have not been given many details about, but that are intriguing and open new avenues of play for the future. Microsoft has announced that users of the service they will be able to play, from the cloud, games that they have already purchased outside of the Game Pass library. Perhaps it is a proposal in the style of GeForce NOW and its compatibility with previously purchased games on Steam? It remains to be seen.
