Microsoft will construct native Xbox video games for the cloud, and the lady behind Portal will lead

On February 1st, I shed a tear for the way forward for gaming, when Google determined it will now not fulfill its promise to construct video games particularly for the cloud. But Microsoft is about to take up the torch: the corporate has employed former Google Stadia design director Kim Swift, greatest identified for Valve’s hit recreation Portal, in keeping with an interview with Polygon.

“Kim is going to build a team focused on new experiences in the cloud,” Xbox Game Studios publishing head Peter Wyse informed Polygon, including that Microsoft’s purpose was to create “cloud-native games.”

Swift has spent over a decade within the video games business since her pupil challenge Narbacular Drop landed her crew jobs at Valve Software, the place she led improvement on Portal. She later grew to become an artist on Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, created an unreleased recreation for Amazon, and was a studio design director at EA, according to her LinkedIn page.

But her extra intriguing position is likely to be the one she simply left at Google Stadia, the place she “oversaw the development of a dozen external development second party games” and “identified potential R&D within Google to develop into a new first party project utilizing cutting-edge, innovative, machine learning technology.” That means she was working with Google and Google’s closest companions on video games which may have actually taken benefit of the cloud.

Fundamentally, the video games you possibly can play on cloud companies like Google Stadia, Amazon Luna, and Microsoft xCloud are not “cloud-native.” They had been designed to run on present consoles and PCs, so the one advantages you usually get from the cloud are quicker load instances, no want to put in or patch video games, and above-average graphics. Every recreation you play on Microsoft’s xCloud runs on a single Xbox board in a server rack, so it’s not all that completely different from the expertise of enjoying on an Xbox at dwelling.

But Google promised it will sometime supply extra: video games that might faucet the ability of a number of servers to offer you gameplay and graphics by no means attainable with a single console in your house. Google poached video games business exec Jade Raymond to guide its improvement studios; in 2019, she told GamesIndustry.biz that it is likely to be “several years” earlier than they produced a recreation “that’s going to fully leverage the cloud.” (Stadia additionally boasted a handful of non-obligatory options that had been unique to the cloud, however few builders have taken benefit.)

With Google’s studios shuttered, Raymond’s now working to create video games for Sony as a substitute, with no explicit point out of the cloud — however Swift simply received snapped up by Microsoft with an express mandate to construct a brand new form of native recreation for the cloud.

“We don’t know exactly what that looks like today, or what that even plays like,” Wyze informed Polygon. But maybe in a number of years, we’ll. Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding auteur Hideo Kojima has repeatedly said he wish to create a recreation explicitly for streaming, and VentureBeat’s Jeff Grubb says Microsoft is in talks to make a deal there.

There are different indicators that Microsoft is getting severe about cloud gaming, too. The firm just lately introduced it’s upgrading its xCloud servers to the most recent Xbox Series X {hardware} as a substitute of the previous Xbox One S server blades it was utilizing earlier than, which ought to dramatically enhance high quality. Microsoft mentioned it’ll let authentic Xbox One consoles in on the motion, too, letting them play video games like Flight Simulator that may beforehand have been out of attain if not for cloud streaming.

And in paperwork unearthed throughout discovery within the Epic v. Apple trial, we discovered that Microsoft was trying to lock down streaming rights from all of its recreation improvement companions in trade for Microsoft drastically lowering its 30 % app retailer price.

Microsoft’s personal inner paperwork advised cloud gaming wasn’t a giant concern in 2019— a presentation we noticed through the trial suggests the whole class solely pulled in round $300 million in 2019, most of that coming from Sony’s PlayStation Now. (Google Stadia didn’t launch till November 2019.) Microsoft additionally feedback in that presentation that neither Sony nor Google had been regarded as worthwhile. And but, the class noticed 167 % progress that yr.