Xbox and PC Game Pass has been a runaway success, offering a vast library of games for a monthly subscription fee. This has been great for the company, but queue times have been massive as huge games release, like Starfield. Xbox is aware of this and is currently scrambling to meet the high demand for its cloud gaming service.
In a recent interview with Windows Central, Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, acknowledged the issue and assured players that Xbox is “working hard to meet that demand.” Spencer explained that the company has “begun to start deploying more blades again” to increase server capacity. The huge boost they received from Brazilian gamers may have led to an increase in wait time.
“Brazil is such a big Xbox Cloud Gaming market for us, and a big Game Pass market for us. Brazil is our second-biggest PC Game Pass market right now… This has been our biggest year for people using Xbox Game Pass on TV. We’re seeing a growing use of Cloud, in Latin America but also globally.”
Phil Spencer
Later, Spencer said the company had to stop Xbox Cloud hardware deployment, causing queue times around Starfield’s release. In order to meet that growing demand, they’ve begun deploying more blades again. During the launch of Starfield’s Game Pass, I saw a queue time of over an hour. At one point, I wasn’t even given a time. It just said that a lot of people were on, and it would take a while.
Even today, I still won’t use the Cloud because of how long it’s taking to get into games. Demand has risen due to a number of factors. Starfield is just one example of the high-profile titles Xbox Game Pass has recently added to its library. In addition, portable gaming devices like the ASUS ROG Ally and devices like the Lenovo Legion Go have opened up new avenues for cloud gaming, attracting players who previously wouldn’t have considered it.
“I think you hit on the right point of ‘what it means to own an Xbox.’ The thing I want to be focused on is how do we continue to innovate for people who’ve made the commitment to our hardware platform… Game Pass was one of the things you know that over the last five years we built, and we continue to grow, it’s on PC, it’s on Cloud. It’s an important part of the Xbox console identity. And I think it will continue to be that.”
Phil Spencer
It appears that Microsoft is not only working on making Cloud queue times shorter but also that the Cloud will become a bigger focus in the future. Who knows, we may not even have another Next Gen console from Microsoft if the Cloud continues to do so well.
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