Cloud adoption and expansion had been slow, but is finally picking up, Spencer said. Gaming via the cloud now accounts for a double-digit percentage of total hours of Xbox games played, he noted. "There was a time when we weren't deploying more [server] blades because we had more supply than we did demand for the server racks that we had in place," he said. "That's clearly not true today."
Last June, Xbox executives testified during a hearing regarding the Microsoft-Activision deal that Xbox cloud gaming had mostly been used by console gamers to try games without downloading them (meaning it wasn't significantly expanding the market). "Any conversation we have on cloud is very time-dependent because it's growing so fast," Spencer said.
Xbox cloud gaming growth in the last six months, he said, has been "in markets that are never going to be console markets," and has been spreading across TVs, Chromebooks and Android tablets.
As for the Series S, Spencer told me in 2020 that he expected it to outsell the more expensive Series X lifetime. He told me last week that he still expects that to be the case.
Microsoft's Phil Spencer on Xbox growth, job cuts and the future of discs (gamefile.news)
Gaming via the cloud now accounts for a double-digit percentage of total hours of Xbox games played, he noted.
Even if this is just 10%, I'm very surprised.
