{"id":508,"date":"2019-12-21T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-21T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/?guid=821f89564225789968c5e32d3273ca5d"},"modified":"2019-12-21T19:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-21T19:00:00","slug":"forward-facing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itteacheritfreelance.hk\/wordpress\/index.php\/2019\/12\/21\/forward-facing\/","title":{"rendered":"Forward Facing"},"content":{"rendered":"

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As the calendar turns to 2020, both PlayStation and Xbox are looking toward the future as they ready their next consoles. While details are just now being released<\/a> for the next Xbox system, the team at Microsoft\u2019s gaming branch is clearly thinking beyond consoles. Several pivotal members of the Xbox team spoke with us about how key philosophies on display today guide and position them for the future.<\/p>\n

Thinking Beyond Consoles<\/h2>\n

After a rough start that saw Xbox One outperformed and outsold by PlayStation 4, Xbox listened more to its player base, and in the process created an ecosystem that catered to its audience that stands in stark contrast to the reveal of the console.<\/p>\n

The team took player feedback into account with initiatives like adding backward compatibility for past Xbox consoles, and Xbox Play Anywhere, which gives players a PC copy of an Xbox game they purchased at no additional cost. \u201cThose come from listening to the customers,\u201d Head of Xbox Phil Spencer says. \u201cWe\u2019re not the first console to do back compat. I think, as a team, we embraced it as well as any other console manufacturer has and really said we want to make it part of the value proposition. That was listening to customers and what they said they wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer<\/p>\n<\/article>\n

To symbolize this commitment to players, Spencer and the leadership team at Xbox keep an empty chair at the leadership table to represent the customer. Spencer admits it\u2019s a bit corny, but it\u2019s a constant reminder to the leadership team who they\u2019re working for and what they want. \u201cThe gamers don\u2019t buy things because we need them to buy it; they don\u2019t do things because we need them to go do them,\u201d he says. \u201cThey do things because it matches what they need, and sometimes, frankly, what gamers want in the near term isn\u2019t always the best business decision for us. But being inside Microsoft, I think because it\u2019s a big company, we take a long-term perspective on things.\u201d<\/p>\n

This customer focus has resonated with fans, which puts Microsoft in position to have a crowd-pleasing release with its next console, which is due in 2020. In fact, this entire current generation, Microsoft has been giving players new and exciting initiatives. From the aforementioned backward compatibility to Project xCloud, Xbox One and Windows 10 have proven to be fertile ground for new consumer-centric ideas. However, no initiative has been a bigger shake up of the industry than the Game Pass subscription service.<\/p>\n

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All Access<\/h2>\n

Gaming is an expensive hobby, and sampling a large swath of the industry is rarely as easy as it seems. Taking risks with new genres and keeping up with every major release is an unrealistic proposition for many. Xbox\u2019s response to this was to introduce Game Pass, a service that allows players to pay a monthly subscription fee and download games across various developers, publishers, and genres at no additional cost on both Xbox and PC.<\/p>\n

Currently, more than 350 games are available to subscribers across Xbox One and PC, including massive, tentpole titles like Gears 5 and The Outer Worlds and indie titles such as Slay the Spire and Lonely Mountains: Downhill. \u201cWe see players willing to take risks on new games and new genres because when you\u2019re already in the subscription it’s as easy as clicking on something, downloading the game, and starting to play,\u201d Spencer says. \u201cThe diversity of content in Game Pass, the genres in Game Pass, the things people play, I think it\u2019s a really healthy part of our industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

This approach has resonated with gamers who not only see value in how many games they instantly have access to with a single price of admission, but in how it enables them to expand their horizons. Thanks to this fact, Spencer says 2019 has seen Game Pass subscribers more than double. \u201cWhen we started Game Pass, we thought the adjective gamers were going to love about Game Pass was \u2018value,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cWhat it\u2019s really turned into is a community that wants a curated set of great games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Game Pass doesn\u2019t just empower players, however. Spencer has noticed that developers, who have often had to rely on a live-game service-based approach for profitability, are using the Game Pass subscription to branch out and explore traditional game models. \u201cYou can have games that can just be games because they live inside of a subscription that has a good business model,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s just an evolving financial model for where risk lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the success of Game Pass from both a development and consumer side, Xbox looks to bolster another new venture as it begins to bring its cloud-streaming service to the forefront.<\/p>\n

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Head In The Clouds<\/h2>\n

While the Xbox One generation has been one of new initiatives for Xbox, few hold as much promise as Project xCloud. The service allows players to take large portions of their Xbox One libraries to different devices. Currently in Xbox\u2019s Preview program, Project xCloud allows players to stream their games to mobile devices over Wi-Fi or mobile data plans thanks to Microsoft\u2019s network of Azure data centers.<\/p>\n

Xbox clearly sees Project xCloud as an important piece of its strategy moving forward, and Microsoft has partnered with more than 20 third-party partners to bring more than 50 games to xCloud as of this writing. \u201c[They\u2019ve] all given their stamp of approval for their games to play with Project xCloud,\u201d general manager of Project xCloud Catherine Gluckstein says. \u201cIt takes hardly any time at all \u2013 I think somewhere less than 30 minutes \u2013 to get a game live.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the biggest potential issues game-streaming services like xCloud face is lowering latency and providing a good experience over Wi-Fi or mobile internet. In addition to leveraging the power of Azure data centers, the xCloud team is attempting to make the technological requirements as low as possible. The team is currently targeting a minimum internet speed of 10 megabits-per-second.<\/p>\n

However, the team knows that eliminating latency in a cloud streaming service isn\u2019t a possibility at this point in the tech\u2019s lifespan. \u201cWhat we\u2019ve found is that consistency of latency is actually much more important than the absence of latency,\u201d corporate vice president of Project xCloud Kareem Choudhry says. \u201cWe\u2019re doing a lot of work to make sure it\u2019s consistent as possible. People kind of adjusted the timing and they\u2019re able to play a game like Killer Instinct in our public preview right now, and Tekken 7, and other ones that you would think would be very, very sensitive to latency.\u201d<\/p>\n