Alongside the announcement of the new ID@Azure program, other news related to cloud gaming has also surfaced. In fact, a new cloud gaming entity is being created within Microsoft. At the helm is Kim Swift, Director of Cloud Gaming since joining Xbox last year. She is best known as a project manager and designer for Portal and Left 4 Dead.
Build cloud-native experiences
This division will “work with world-class development teams to create cloud-native games to provide players with unprecedented experiences.” The term cloud native is different from streaming a Game Pass game. Although we use the term in this case because it depends on remote servers, we are talking about games developed mainly for consoles. This would be about managing certain aspects of a title such as lighting, physics or environments via the cloud.
An example we’ve seen of this type of usage in the past is Demolition mode in Crackdown 3. Harnessing the computing power of the cloud, players can demolish such large buildings without sacrificing performance. And that’s about the only example we’ve got so far. Swift also points out in her presentation that the technology is still in its infancy.
When Netflix was developed, internet speeds were not sufficient to send packets fast enough to support streaming. So they sent physical packages in the form of DVDs in the mail and had to wait for technology to catch up with their vision. But they were willing to do it.
In her opinion, the cloud will be used in three fields of action: artificial intelligence, real-time calculations and ubiquity. If the first two are pretty impressive, the third is more cryptic. For Swift, it’s all about the ability to stream games to any device, even if the device isn’t powerful enough to run them natively.
Following last week’s announcement of a new cloud computing technology at Ubisoft, the race to democratize the tools and resources required seems to have begun.