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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?
Click to expand...
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
Click to expand...

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
 
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