The manager hopes that this coming year will be when streaming Xbox video games on a television will be a reality. Xbox on more devices.
Xbox wants to be on all devices, including televisions. Phil Spencer, head of the Microsoft video games department, has insisted on more than one occasion in his interest in transferring the Xbox app and the xCloud infrastructure (game streaming through the cloud) to both mobile devices and Smart TV . The first they have achieved on Android, while on iOS it seems to be closer than ever. In his words, 2021 aims to be the year of televisions.
“You will see it in the next twelve months”
In conversations with The Verge, Spencer explained that one of Microsoft’s goals for next year is to allow Smart TVs, those televisions with the ability to play applications through an Internet connection, receive an Xbox app to play in streaming, as it happens with other entertainment applications such as Netflix, Spotify or Disney +.
“You will see it in the next twelve months,” he says explicitly. Given the difficulties that may be encountered along the way, as has happened in the Apple ecosystem due to its restrictive policies and measures, the visible head of Xbox is confident of not finding problems of this kind
Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, Microsoft’s new consoles.
What has not transpired from the conversation is whether xCloud will arrive on Smart TV in the same way that it has on Android devices (integrated into the Xbox Game Pass app) or if it will do so in a different way. In fact, he himself considered in the past the manufacture of hardware “at a lower price”, which invites us to think about one of the so common HDMI sticks that incorporate a proprietary operating system to offer multimedia solutions; see Chromecast or Amazon Fire TV, of which compatibility with Xbox is expected in any case in the future.
In any case, cloud gaming will not prevent Microsoft from maintaining its goals in the traditional console framework. “I do not think these are the last great pieces of hardware that we make,” he adds, in relation to Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, already available worldwide at a recommended price of 499 euros and 299 euros, respectively. They are already the launch of a most successful generation Xbox in the history of the company.
References | The Verge (2)
