Xbox Game Studios has created a new division that will focus on creating partnerships with developers, which would focus on creating experiences exclusive to the cloud and Xbox platforms. This division is led by Kim Swift, who joined Xbox last year as director of cloud gaming.
In a video dedicated to developers, Kim Switf seeks to attract partners to do projects together that are in line with the vision of Xbox Game Studios Publishing, which seeks to create unprecedented experiences that can only be enjoyed through the cloud. The difference between these games and those of Xbox Cloud Gaming is that they would run natively in the cloud.
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Although Xbox Cloud Gaming allows us to play a huge catalog of games from any device, as long as it has a good internet connection, it does so by running the game and sending the control to the player through the cloud. However, Xbox Game Studios Publishing’s approach is to have the game perform some operations on cloud servers.
If certain parts of the game are calculated in the cloud, this could help reduce the requirements of the hardware that is running the game, as well as help all participating players get the same experience. An example of this is Crackdown 3’s Wrecking Zone mode, which performs destruction calculations in the cloud so as not to impact performance.
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The goal of this new division is to partner with world-class developers and create exclusive experiences for Xbox platforms, which would be played through the cloud natively. According to his presentation, Xbox seeks to create unprecedented experiences that can only be achieved through the cloud.
Kim Swift believes that Cloud Gaming is still in its infancy and compares it to Netflix when it was just starting out as a streaming service. There are three main points that they want to address with cloud gaming, starting with ubiquity, which would allow us to play wherever and whenever; AI in the cloud, which could create more convincing NPCs; and a performance boost by relegating tasks to the cloud.