| Azzanation said: Are you referring to the hardware needed for their server farms? If so, building hardware for XCloud and selling hardware at a loss to customers are completely different. MS wont have limitations on building powerful hardware for their Cloud streaming services, if they dont have to worry about selling that hardware to the average consumer at a loss. They can come out tomorrow and tell Devs, XCloud has 90TF GPUs, help yourself. That can entice major devs in cutting loose on console limitations and just go bang with whatever game they want to make. Also if the hardware is losing $1 per console sold and they sell 50m consoles, thats money down the drain. Phil said the Series consoles are losing $200 per unit. Thats a $10b loss at 50m sold. The more they produce the higher the bill gets. They can avoid that bill by simply moving away from it. They have the infrastructure to do it, its just timing. Like Digital and VR, it will take time to grow and it will grow as tech improves overtime. |
And how much will it cost them to run the games on their servers, provide 90TF GPU performance + appropriate CPU performance and stream the individual results to 50 million xCloud users for 5+ years instead? Including hardware costs, electricity costs, cooling costs, costs for the additional buildings, costs for maintence and support...?
Of course not every user plays 24/7, so they won't need 50 million systems for 50 million users. But the costs for Microsoft rise immensely for every "teraflop" they give their users additionally, so I doubt they would be that generous.
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