REACTION - XBOX cloud streaming limits reaffirm their uncanny ability to shoot themselves in the foot
Multiple Picard face palms.
By Jonathan Garrett
03/09/25
Leave it to Xbox to fumble a golden opportunity. Amidst a PlayStation social media and State of Play anger storm where comment sections are being bombarded with bring back physical rhetoric, one would hope that Xbox could seize the potential of the moment. Announce an optional disc tray attachment for Project Helix. Announce an expansion of the disc to digital programme that includes 360 or even OG Xbox games. Paint Sony as rigid and Xbox as consumer first.
Instead, they squander any semblance of positive sentiment by massively curtailing the flexibility and access to their own cloud streaming services, which will soon feature monthly limitations that scale up depending on your Game Pass tier. The optional paid bolt ons to increase it did little to sway the reasonable consensus that this is a daft course change that is unlikely to yield positive results.
Weren’t we led to believe that cloud streaming was the answer to ballooning hardware costs? Opening up any device to be an Xbox? All Sony have to do now is shit out a thirty second PlayStation Plus ad with a lower third chyron that reads: Unlimited Streaming, and they can un do years of Microsoft’s early presence in the cloud streaming space.
Balancing the books is an obvious requirement for any company. That being said, I don’t believe this is the right play longer term, and makes the value argument around cloud streaming tougher to justify.
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
