Microsoft putting hourly limits on Xbox Cloud Gaming starting in November 2026

Well, that's a 30 minute session each day, or you can ration it and get drunk on gaming come saturday
 
sharknice said:
I wonder what the xbox cloud usage stats are. Are they doing this because a significant amount of people are actually using it?
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I’ve previously estimated the cost of a single streaming hour at around $0.45. But based on the 2022 data leak, we know that the average revenue has fluctuated around $0.22 per hour, or about half.​

https://superjoost.substack.com/p/the-end-of-cheap-compute

I was recently told by Microsoft figures that, given compute demands for AI, Xbox Cloud Gaming is effectively losing money when used beyond 15 hours per month. ​

https://www.windowscentral.com/gami...nt-see-much-of-a-future-for-xbox-cloud-gaming
 
Marees said:
I’ve previously estimated the cost of a single streaming hour at around $0.45. But based on the 2022 data leak, we know that the average revenue has fluctuated around $0.22 per hour, or about half.​

https://superjoost.substack.com/p/the-end-of-cheap-compute

I was recently told by Microsoft figures that, given compute demands for AI, Xbox Cloud Gaming is effectively losing money when used beyond 15 hours per month. ​

https://www.windowscentral.com/gami...nt-see-much-of-a-future-for-xbox-cloud-gaming
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From that article:
"Microsoft says that the changes will impact "4%" of Xbox Game Pass subscribers, which in essence still amounts to well over a million players."


I wonder how fast it is growing.
 
sharknice said:
From that article:
"Microsoft says that the changes will impact "4%" of Xbox Game Pass subscribers, which in essence still amounts to well over a million players."


I wonder how fast it is growing.
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If true, that seems like a reasonable compromise. I'm surprised it's only 4%.
 
sleepeeg3 said:
If true, that seems like a reasonable compromise. I'm surprised it's only 4%.
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they want to massively increase cloud gaming

but first stop the 50% subsidy that is happening right now

need to wait & watch the pricing for additional (pay-as-you-go) cloud streaming bundles. apparently the bundles are true pay as you go & will not have an expiry time . you don't need a game pass subscription also

& in future there would be an ad-supported free tier like what nvidia has today
 
sharknice said:
I wonder what the xbox cloud usage stats are. Are they doing this because a significant amount of people are actually using it?
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It's like GamePass where Microsoft is increasing pricing because they can. In this case, limit hours of play time per day. Fifteen hours isn't a lot for a gamer. I probably go through that much in a few days.
Marees said:
they want to massively increase cloud gaming

but first stop the 50% subsidy that is happening right now
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If this is considered a subsidy then cloud gaming is guaranteed not to have a future.
 
are closed said:
Is anyone here on forums actually using this service?
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It's helpful for people who don't have a newer console. I have an Xbox one X in my living room, I use that with could gaming because all new games don't support installation on the older Gen consoles.

15 hours/week is very little, but I also won't cloud game for much more than 4 hours a week at best.
 
AmongTheChosenX said:
It's helpful for people who don't have a newer console. I have an Xbox one X in my living room, I use that with could gaming because all new games don't support installation on the older Gen consoles.

15 hours/week is very little, but I also won't cloud game for much more than 4 hours a week at best.
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Thanks, I was hoping someone could chime in who actually uses services, to speak from first hand experience. Makes the conversation more dynamic.
 
AmongTheChosenX said:
It's helpful for people who don't have a newer console. I have an Xbox one X in my living room, I use that with could gaming because all new games don't support installation on the older Gen consoles.

15 hours/week is very little, but I also won't cloud game for much more than 4 hours a week at best.
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The problem is that cloud gaming isn't cheap. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is $23 per month, or $276 per year. A used Xbox Series S costs about as much as one year of Game Pass Ultimate. You can find a used PS5 for under $400. Keep in mind that this service does require hardware, and not everyone can find a perfect working Xbox One X in the trash like I can. As a gamer, 15 hours is like 3 days of gaming, maybe a week max if I attend my other projects instead. If you can't tolerate 4 hours of it then it's a waste of money.
 
are closed said:
Is anyone here on forums actually using this service?
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I tried it, but unfortunately where I live even with the recent fiber developments in rural areas giving me 500 mb/s it still felt super janky. I'm talking high latency and like skipped frames, random freezes, etc. I guess you just gotta live in an area near an internet exchange point near their servers or something to really get a good experience.
 
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I’m guessing that 15 hours represents a study of actual usage plus an adequate amount of headroom. So maybe the current average usage might be 7-10 hours a month…and they will make the few heavy users either pay more or throttle back (probably the preferred outcome so they can put more customers on existing hardware)
 
westrock2000 said:
I’m guessing that 15 hours represents a study of actual usage plus an adequate amount of headroom. So maybe the current average usage might be 7-10 hours a month…and they will make the few heavy users either pay more or throttle back (probably the preferred outcome so they can put more customers on existing hardware)
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plan is something like below

Marees said:
they want to massively increase cloud gaming

but first stop the 50% subsidy that is happening right now

need to wait & watch the pricing for additional (pay-as-you-go) cloud streaming bundles. apparently the bundles are true pay as you go & will not have an expiry time . you don't need a game pass subscription also

& in future there would be an ad-supported free tier like what nvidia has today
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Marees said:
25 hours of streaming could be available for $6 per month (rumour)

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Xbox-...d-cloud-gaming-in-future-tiers.1399670.0.html
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sharknice said:
I wonder what the xbox cloud usage stats are. Are they doing this because a significant amount of people are actually using it?
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Probably not a significant number of people, but it is because it is expensive. The cloud is only cheap when it doesn't get used much, you have systems sitting around doing nothing occasionally handing out some data to someone. Then you can stack them high and wide with customers. When people want to use them all the time, it costs. That's why if you look at prices on AWS or Azure you discover that if you take something the size of a hardware server and run it 24/7/365 it takes less than a year (well, maybe longer now with component price increases) to equal the cost of just buying one of that size.

So for cloud gaming: Companies LOVE the idea... but only so long as people don't use it a lot. They want you to pay a monthly subscription fee and basically forget about it, and only use it occasionally. Like a gym membership. That way they can collect money and not have to pay too much on hardware since it mostly sits idle. If you actually use it a lot, well then it starts costing money and that subscription no longer makes them money. Solution? Usage caps. You only get a little bit for your subscription fee, and you have to pay per hour for more. That way, to them, is the best of both worlds: You get the people who pay monthly and rarely if ever use it AND you get to charge per usage for the people who do.
 
It's not really about the hardware. It's about the connection speed. Most cloud hardware is outdated. I remember when I used to work at a Fortune 500 company, and they wanted to switch to AWS, but the hardware was 5 years behind, and they charged so much for it. Yet somehow a $600 server would cost a multi-billion dollar company $20,000, and that was too much.

At any rate, if you have decent hardware, but good download AND upload speeds, just keep Steam on at home, and you got yourself an unlimited cloud gaming setup and games are cheaper when you wait for sales.
 
El_Capitan said:
It's not really about the hardware. It's about the connection speed. Most cloud hardware is outdated. I remember when I used to work at a Fortune 500 company, and they wanted to switch to AWS, but the hardware was 5 years behind, and they charged so much for it. Yet somehow a $600 server would cost a multi-billion dollar company $20,000, and that was too much.
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Remember Stadia and it's equivalent of a Vega 56 that powered the service? At the time Ray-Tracing was just getting started and Stadia was already behind. I'm sure people expect Geforce Now to have access to a RTX 4090 but you're probably sharing that 4090 with several other people and don't know it.
At any rate, if you have decent hardware, but good download AND upload speeds, just keep Steam on at home, and you got yourself an unlimited cloud gaming setup and games are cheaper when you wait for sales.
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I would recommend a Seam Deck but those prices are now awful. The best thing to do now is just wait or just play older games.
 
DukenukemX said:
Remember Stadia and it's equivalent of a Vega 56 that powered the service? At the time Ray-Tracing was just getting started and Stadia was already behind. I'm sure people expect Geforce Now to have access to a RTX 4090 but you're probably sharing that 4090 with several other people and don't know it.
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Stadia was hilarious because prior to launch they were talking about having exclusive games that would give you an experience that you couldn't have locally because they'd use so many resources... Then at some point during development said "Well that's too expensive, what if we just game people mid-range PC/console specs and shipped a few titles already out there?"
 
Sycraft said:
Stadia was hilarious because prior to launch they were talking about having exclusive games that would give you an experience that you couldn't have locally because they'd use so many resources... Then at some point during development said "Well that's too expensive, what if we just game people mid-range PC/console specs and shipped a few titles already out there?"
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Yeah. They also hype it up like there are cool new things they can do that aren't possible with regular games Then don't make a single game.
 
DukenukemX said:
I'm sure people expect Geforce Now to have access to a RTX 4090 but you're probably sharing that 4090 with several other people and don't know it.
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They use cut in half RTX 6000 for the top of the line affair, that why you get 48GB of vram and around a 5080 in performance, Big core counts Epyc CPU let them have 4 of those in the same machine and create 8 nice virtual gaming one. Could be easier to rent to other during down gaming hours has well to use an RTX 6000 for this....

Sycraft said:
If you actually use it a lot, well then it starts costing money and that subscription no longer makes them money.
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yup and for both party here, it make sense if you can share hardware to 5-6 more casual gamers, they can pay less than owning and server can make good money (less than if they could sold the full thing to each of course but still good) at the same time
 
DukenukemX said:
The problem is that cloud gaming isn't cheap. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is $23 per month, or $276 per year. A used Xbox Series S costs about as much as one year of Game Pass Ultimate. You can find a used PS5 for under $400. Keep in mind that this service does require hardware, and not everyone can find a perfect working Xbox One X in the trash like I can. As a gamer, 15 hours is like 3 days of gaming, maybe a week max if I attend my other projects instead. If you can't tolerate 4 hours of it then it's a waste of money.
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Yeah that's true, which is why you have to weigh both options. For some people it might only make sense to get gamepass ultimate trial codes or 1 month codes for a few months at a time rather than subscribe for the entire year.

Personally what I'm doing right now since my gamepass ultimate expired is purchasing a 1 months subscription each month from eneba or g2a, if I have a month where I'm mostly just PC gaming then I won't need it that month. I'm likely going to purchase the games that I play the most on the platform I choose -- shooters on PC, RPGs on Xbox, for roughly $20/game and I'll probably save $ in the long term, while still having the flexibility to cloud game every now and then
 
are closed said:
Thanks, I was hoping someone could chime in who actually uses services, to speak from first hand experience. Makes the conversation more dynamic.
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For sure. It DOES work, but like some others have posted you need data download AND UPLOAD speeds ... To be honest, if you don't have a fiber connection with a 1:1 download to upload ratio, your experience might suck.

For a while I was playing super mega baseball, which on my phone was fine because the franchise mode played like a mobile game. The actual gameplay was "fine", it would hiccup here and there, and you absolutely cannot expect the same experience as a local console running the game (and any company that offers that at this point in time is likely lying). It's a "nice to have" for testing out new games and for playing next Gen games on previous Gen hardware.
 
AmongTheChosenX said:
For sure. It DOES work, but like some others have posted you need data download AND UPLOAD speeds ... To be honest, if you don't have a fiber connection with a 1:1 download to upload ratio, your experience might suck.

For a while I was playing super mega baseball, which on my phone was fine because the franchise mode played like a mobile game. The actual gameplay was "fine", it would hiccup here and there, and you absolutely cannot expect the same experience as a local console running the game (and any company that offers that at this point in time is likely lying). It's a "nice to have" for testing out new games and for playing next Gen games on previous Gen hardware.
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Also, even with fiber, it flat out doesn't look as good. All the video is compressed and part of that compression is the typical 4:2:0 color compression most modern digital video does. That just degrades fine detail and there's no way around it. It's why shit on Youtube never looks as good as it does in person. Even at 4k where there's decent bitrates, there's still not enough so you see game footage and it looks good, but then you play it locally and it looks better.

Only solution to that would be to go fucking crazy with the bitrate. Like let's take AVC Intra 4k444, that's a pro format that is per-frame compression (which means it is good for fast changes), 4:4:4 color, meaning no chroma downsampling and of course 4k. It is appropriate for video that is going to be heavily edited and is basically visually lossless, or very near to it. That's 800mbps... for 24fps. So ya, that is the kind of codec that could really compete with local rendering... if you had a connection that could do 4gbps or so of throughput for 120fps. Oh, and you'd actually want something more like a 40gbps+ connection to keep the latency on the frames low since the transfer time of a frame matters.

So that is never happening. That means we are going to continue to have basically what we have now: Blu-rayish bitrates (25-100mbps or so) max, though doing more work since they are covering 60-120fps, chroma downsampling, inter-frame compression and so on. That isn't awful, but does result in detail loss and there isn't any fixing that outside of less compression, meaning higher bandwidth usage.


Now maybe people don't care. A lot of people watch Twitch all the time and they compress the everliving fuck out of video to the point that it is a smeary mess. So maybe people decide that is a fine look and they'll game like that happily.
 
Sycraft said:
Also, even with fiber, it flat out doesn't look as good. All the video is compressed and part of that compression is the typical 4:2:0 color compression most modern digital video does. That just degrades fine detail and there's no way around it. It's why shit on Youtube never looks as good as it does in person. Even at 4k where there's decent bitrates, there's still not enough so you see game footage and it looks good, but then you play it locally and it looks better.

Only solution to that would be to go fucking crazy with the bitrate. Like let's take AVC Intra 4k444, that's a pro format that is per-frame compression (which means it is good for fast changes), 4:4:4 color, meaning no chroma downsampling and of course 4k. It is appropriate for video that is going to be heavily edited and is basically visually lossless, or very near to it. That's 800mbps... for 24fps. So ya, that is the kind of codec that could really compete with local rendering... if you had a connection that could do 4gbps or so of throughput for 120fps. Oh, and you'd actually want something more like a 40gbps+ connection to keep the latency on the frames low since the transfer time of a frame matters.

So that is never happening. That means we are going to continue to have basically what we have now: Blu-rayish bitrates (25-100mbps or so) max, though doing more work since they are covering 60-120fps, chroma downsampling, inter-frame compression and so on. That isn't awful, but does result in detail loss and there isn't any fixing that outside of less compression, meaning higher bandwidth usage.


Now maybe people don't care. A lot of people watch Twitch all the time and they compress the everliving fuck out of video to the point that it is a smeary mess. So maybe people decide that is a fine look and they'll game like that happily.
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It is true that most people don't care. You can do A B comparison and majority of people will not beable to tell the difference. That is why streaming is taking everything over. People just see the convenience. And that is how they have been slow eroding consumer rights when it comes to consumer right with media.
 
vegeta535 said:
It is true that most people don't care. You can do A B comparison and majority of people will not beable to tell the difference. That is why streaming is taking everything over. People just see the convenience. And that is how they have been slow eroding consumer rights when it comes to consumer right with media.
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I mean not so far with games. So far everyone who has tried it has had little success.

With video streaming, it is a much easier sell. The latency doesn't matter, you are watching a prerendered stream, so it can buffer, meaning even on very high latency connections it works fine so long as you have enough bandwidth. Also video compression works a lot better on it. Most of the compression algorithms were designed with video in mind and some of the limits like the chroma subsamlping are not nearly so noticeable in video. That actually goes back to the analog days, chroma subsampling was a thing there too. Finally, all the video you get even on local media is compressed, using those game codecs. Blu-ray is all MPEG-2, H.264, VC-1 or in the case of 4k possibly H.265. So if a streaming service offers a high enough bandwidth stream, it'll look the same.

It makes streaming video a much easier sell. Videogames have a number of more issues but latency is just the biggest one. Latency matters in games, streaming will always add latency, and the only way to reduce it is to move servers closer to the consumers, which is expensive, and a lot of it is out of the control of the company offering it.


Again, not saying it is impossible everything will go that way, but so far all the streaming efforts have fallen very flat. They aren't dead, people use them, but they are hardly making waves. Shit like hourly limits are not going to help matters at all.
 
Sycraft said:
I mean not so far with games. So far everyone who has tried it has had little success.

With video streaming, it is a much easier sell. The latency doesn't matter, you are watching a prerendered stream, so it can buffer, meaning even on very high latency connections it works fine so long as you have enough bandwidth. Also video compression works a lot better on it. Most of the compression algorithms were designed with video in mind and some of the limits like the chroma subsamlping are not nearly so noticeable in video. That actually goes back to the analog days, chroma subsampling was a thing there too. Finally, all the video you get even on local media is compressed, using those game codecs. Blu-ray is all MPEG-2, H.264, VC-1 or in the case of 4k possibly H.265. So if a streaming service offers a high enough bandwidth stream, it'll look the same.

It makes streaming video a much easier sell. Videogames have a number of more issues but latency is just the biggest one. Latency matters in games, streaming will always add latency, and the only way to reduce it is to move servers closer to the consumers, which is expensive, and a lot of it is out of the control of the company offering it.


Again, not saying it is impossible everything will go that way, but so far all the streaming efforts have fallen very flat. They aren't dead, people use them, but they are hardly making waves. Shit like hourly limits are not going to help matters at all.
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I can easily see it taking over casual gaming. Your typical non-competitive console gamer. I've been saying this for a long time. They've historically been ok with terrible latency, often don't even have their console and TV configured to the optimal setttings. They just play the game and are oblivious. Convinience is the most important thing to them. Streaming has the potential be the most convinient way to game for many people.

Competitive gamers aren't going to settle for streaming if there are better options. Same for a large chunk of PC gamers that care about good graphis, frame rates, and low latency.

Eventually game streaming will be the default way to play games. Your TV and phone will just have a game streaming app. And it will be a gateway for many people to get into real gaming on their own hardware as they desire something better.
 
sharknice said:
I can easily see it taking over casual gaming. Your typical non-competitive console gamer. I've been saying this for a long time. They've historically been ok with terrible latency, often don't even have their console and TV configured to the optimal setttings. They just play the game and are oblivious. Convinience is the most important thing to them. Streaming has the potential be the most convinient way to game for many people.
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We'll see, not so far. I think another issue it has is that it doesn't work well if you are on the go and the Switch is SUPER popular. Steaming over cell is pretty miserable, particularly if you are moving. People seem to like to game while riding the subway, plane, etc.

I'm not writing it off, but so far it has just been a non-starter overall, and not because it is just niche players in the market.


I think part of it may be that you are misreading the market in that the people you think are "casual" aren't as casual as you think. I think the super casual, "games are just a thing I noodle on once and awhile" crowd has been largely taken by crap mobile games. The little match 3 type games are enough to keep them happy for the small amount they game. Those might be the market streaming would be after, but it is a hard market to get because the simple mobile games do the trick and they don't eat your data plan or not work when you are in a doctor's office with crappy signal. The non-competitive gamers, like me, that you call "casual" really are less casual. You have people who like gaming, for who it is a non-trivial hobby, and who may not be interested in it being shittier.
 
sharknice said:
I can easily see it taking over casual gaming. Your typical non-competitive console gamer. I've been saying this for a long time. They've historically been ok with terrible latency, often don't even have their console and TV configured to the optimal setttings. They just play the game and are oblivious. Convinience is the most important thing to them. Streaming has the potential be the most convinient way to game for many people.
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Casual doesn't mean they expect a shit experience. Some casual gamers will spend more money than elite gamers just to make sure they have a good experience. Casual gamers are people who rarely play games. Not exactly a good source of revenue. If the experience is bad then they'll likely stay away from gaming.
Competitive gamers aren't going to settle for streaming if there are better options. Same for a large chunk of PC gamers that care about good graphis, frame rates, and low latency.
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PC gamers aren't always about graphics, frame rates, and law latency. For PC gamers it's freedom. There are things you can do on a PC that a console could never do legally. Just look at the situation with GTA6 mods. Try telling a PC gamer that they can't install certain mods?
Eventually game streaming will be the default way to play games. Your TV and phone will just have a game streaming app. And it will be a gateway for many people to get into real gaming on their own hardware as they desire something better.
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Unlikely to ever happen. Cloud gaming has been tried for 15 years and it still hasn't happened. It's not cost effective, it's not stable, and it's not a good experience. Speed of light is your enemy. Running a massive infrastructure is not cost effective. Allowing games to run on your cloud service is not legally feasible. Stop trying to make cloud gaming happen.
 
DukenukemX said:
Casual doesn't mean they expect a shit experience. Some casual gamers will spend more money than elite gamers just to make sure they have a good experience. Casual gamers are people who rarely play games. Not exactly a good source of revenue. If the experience is bad then they'll likely stay away from gaming.

PC gamers aren't always about graphics, frame rates, and law latency. For PC gamers it's freedom. There are things you can do on a PC that a console could never do legally. Just look at the situation with GTA6 mods. Try telling a PC gamer that they can't install certain mods?

Unlikely to ever happen. Cloud gaming has been tried for 15 years and it still hasn't happened. It's not cost effective, it's not stable, and it's not a good experience. Speed of light is your enemy. Running a massive infrastructure is not cost effective. Allowing games to run on your cloud service is not legally feasible. Stop trying to make cloud gaming happen.
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nah, give it 15 years and check back.
 
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