| shikamaru317 said: I think it's a safe bet that the Cloud hybrid plans for gen 10 have been replaced by a traditional console. If you look at what Xbox was expecting at the time these docs are all from (2020-2021), they clearly thought Cloud gaming was going to grow alot more than it did. As you can see below, they were expecting more Xbox Cloud users than Xbox PC users by about FY2028, roughly 18m active Cloud users by fiscal year 2028:
That clearly isn't going to happen, Phil himself admitted on the stand that Cloud isn't growing the way they thought it would, he admitted that the userbase is small enough that they only have the server capacity for 5k peak concurrent Cloud users in the UK, which is Xbox's 2nd biggest market. Seems likely that any Cloud hybrid console plans Xbox have will have been delayed to gen 11, highly doubt they will decide to release such a cloud heavy gen 10 console in 2028 when Cloud gaming has yet to properly takeoff by 2023. |
Why not both?
Actually, I'm pretty sure this "Hybrid" is "Hybrid" in the way that Flight Simulator is a "Cloud Game" but can be played offline. I think people are reading "Hybrid" and jumping to a conclusion of "Cloud Only" but I don't see that. It speaks about both the combined power of the client and the cloud. It says it will enable new levels of performance beyond client hardware alone.
I'm reading this as a digital only console but not a Cloud only console, I think the more likely explanation is that we'll still have titles running traditionally off the client hardware but it'll also have built in features (such as Keystone was going to have) which enable it and developers to take further advantage of the Cloud to "enhance" the native experience...Aka like Flight Simulator but more on a hardware level.
I feel like they could still do it if my assumption is correct. Though they also speak about doing Handheld devices. I'm not sure if this is meant to be a Handheld device or they mean separate Handheld devices, they further speak about enabling the controller to play on a multitude of devices, Lol. But anyway if the hardware still works locally then I see no reason why they can't still do a Cloud boost for it as well.
Cloud Only would be a disaster and far too early and if that was the case then I would agree that those plans will be scrapped, xCloud can't take the capacity, the servers are crammed. Very significant events have happened since then as well, such as the regulators being bitches and causing Microsoft to cancel a bunch of Cloud stuff and those deals with Cloud rivals and Ubisoft basically put Microsoft's ambitions on hold for 10-15 years.
I want Microsoft to do ARM now though, after I was told how powerful it is but also adaptable from Console to Handheld.
