Xbox boss: Amazon and Google are our main competitors, not Sony and Nintendo

[midian182]

A hot potato: Ask most people who are the biggest rivals to Microsoft, and they’ll probably say Sony and Nintendo. But one person who disagrees is head of Xbox Phil Spencer, who says that the company sees Amazon and Google as its main future competitors.

In an interview with tech site Protocol, Spencer said the two other main console players are unable to create a cloud infrastructure that could match Microsoft’s Azure.

“When you talk about Nintendo and Sony, we have a ton of respect for them, but we see Amazon and Google as the main competitors going forward,” he said. “That’s not to disrespect Nintendo and Sony, but the traditional gaming companies are somewhat out of position. I guess they could try to re-create Azure, but we’ve invested tens of billions of dollars in cloud over the years.”

Microsoft might be releasing its PS5-rival Xbox Series X later this year, but it appears that Spencer sees cloud gaming as the future of the industry. The company’s xCloud platform, which lets users access a wide variety of Xbox and PC games from their laptop, tablet, smartphone, or PC, is set to arrive sometime this year, and is currently available in an invite-only preview. It’ll be going up against the likes of Google’s Stadia service that launched in 2019.

Sony, you might remember, last year announced a “strategic partnership” with Microsoft, allowing the company use of Azure’s datacenter-based solutions to support game and content-streaming services.

Spencer added that “I don’t want to be in a fight over format wars with those guys [Sony and Nintendo] while Amazon and Google are focusing on how to get gaming to 7 billion people around the world. Ultimately, that’s the goal.”

The future of cloud gaming is certainly an interesting one. More companies are pouring resources into the sector, including Nvidia, which only just made its GeForce Now service generally available across the US and other nations. Whether streaming will replace all gaming platforms, as Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot once predicted, is debatable, but Microsoft appears to have plenty of faith in the technology.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/83877-xbox-boss-amazon-google-our-main-competitors-not.html

 

[Vulcanproject]

Of course he would say that, because Microsoft have spent the last 6 years heavily losing out to Sony and Nintendo in the console space.

I also see the future with on demand cloud based services. A future where everyone can sit down with their gigabit internet and play 4K games with minimal latency and little quality drop over local rendering.

That is a distant future for the majority of the planet. Which explains why Microsoft allegedly have not one but two new consoles planned to launch soon, as well as throwing all their games software onto PC.

This means they are hedging their bets plenty no matter what they say.

 

[psycros]

Of course he would say that, because Microsoft have spent the last 6 years heavily losing out to Sony and Nintendo in the console space.

I also see the future with on demand cloud based services. A future where everyone can sit down with their gigabit internet and play 4K games with minimal latency and little quality drop over local rendering.

That is a distant future for the majority of the planet. Which explains why Microsoft allegedly have not one but two new consoles planned to launch soon, as well as throwing all their games software onto PC.

This means they are hedging their bets plenty no matter what they say.

Yeah, that was some truly pitiful misdirection by Microsuck. Not even the most junior analysts or tech journalists are buying that BS.

 

[dangh]

We already have the best streaming gaming service on market available from Sony, PSNow. Nothing else comes close yet, and he is not concerned?
Will be interesting what Xbox is going to do with next generation. I will stick with Sony, it will be a safe bet.

 

[Lionvibez]

Lol and you can throw Nvidia into the mix now with Geforce Now.

 

[MasterMace]

Sony has already won the next console war

 

[poohbear]

Gaming is the only medium that hasn't gone streaming yet. Music (spotify) & movies (netflix) are already established as very profitable when streamed as a service. Netflix is a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company. And the movie industry is SMALLER than the video game industry...why wouldn't the video game industry try do the same thing? The technology is ready to facilitate such a move; wifi 6, Gigabit fibre-optic internet... there are hundreds of billions to be made so they're all very much motivated to be the dominant player in this new sphere of gaming.

So, I dont see him as lying when he says Amazon & Google are their competitors. The money they made with Xbox is peanuts compared to an entire future with cloud gaming...all on their cloud-based web services that they've invested billions to develop.

 

[Mark Adler]

Gaming is the only medium that hasn't gone streaming yet. Music (spotify) & movies (netflix) are already established as very profitable when streamed as a service. Netflix is a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company. And the movie industry is SMALLER than the video game industry...why wouldn't the video game industry try do the same thing? The technology is ready to facilitate such a move; wifi 6, Gigabit fibre-optic internet... there are hundreds of billions to be made so they're all very much motivated to be the dominant player in this new sphere of gaming.

So, I dont see him as lying when he says Amazon & Google are their competitors. The money they made with Xbox is peanuts compared to an entire future with cloud gaming...all on their cloud-based web services that they've invested billions to develop.

Not everyone lives in first-world-gigabit-internet-streaming

 

[McMurdeR]

Guess he missed Stadia's disappointing launch. Gamers want local hardware. Cloud still isn't a good solution for latency dependent applications

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Without EXCLUSIVES, Xbox can't compete with Sony or Nintendo which have far more exclusive IP to use. Xbox has Halo and GEars. That's just not enough for me.

Microsoft should have spun Xbox into "Games for Windows" so it would look like Xbox was just an extension of the PC. That's part of why I bought into Xbox in the first place. It offered PC-oriented games while PS2 didn't.

 

[numnumnum]

I guess I will go with PS5 + GeForce now for the next gen. Supporting Sony with their story rich games is a no-brainer in times of low quality, full of microtransactions projects.

 

[poohbear]

Not everyone lives in first-world-gigabit-internet-streaming

2008: very few people had smartphones (they were actually ridiculed when they first came out), music streaming services didn't exist, and Netflix was a $5 stock (it's now $370).

If you noticed, we were talking about the future. The companies that establish themselves early on become the dominant players (ie now in 2020).

So yes, why would MS care about Sony & Nintendo when in 5-10 years game streaming will dwarf the current market?

 

[jpuroila]

Gaming is the only medium that hasn't gone streaming yet. Music (spotify) & movies (netflix) are already established as very profitable when streamed as a service. Netflix is a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company. And the movie industry is SMALLER than the video game industry...why wouldn't the video game industry try do the same thing? The technology is ready to facilitate such a move; wifi 6, Gigabit fibre-optic internet... there are hundreds of billions to be made so they're all very much motivated to be the dominant player in this new sphere of gaming.

So, I dont see him as lying when he says Amazon & Google are their competitors. The money they made with Xbox is peanuts compared to an entire future with cloud gaming...all on their cloud-based web services that they've invested billions to develop.

Music and video don't care about latency.