Næste år vil Microsoft lancere xCloud, et ambitiøst nyt streaming-program der skal bringe en konsollignende oplevelse til alle slags enheder, deriblandt smartphones. Der er dog en række af sådanne tjenester på markedet allerede, og der er endnu flere på vej, men Microsoft mener at de har hvad der skal til for at slå konkurrenterne.
For nylig talte Phil Spencer om tjenesten på Barclays 2018 Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference (som du kan se her), og her nævnte han specifikt relationer med tredjeparter som én af grundene til at de vil vinde kapløbet.
"When you look at services like Project xCloud, then you start putting the math together and saying 'okay, now we have thousands of pieces of content from our partners. They've already built this content, and I can basically stream it to any player, anywhere, with any devices, which opens up a huge new market for them. The third-party relationships that we've built, not only the games that are under development today, but the past two decades of games that they've built on our platform, we're unlocking new business opportunities for that third-party content.
"We know that our system really only works if third parties are monetizing well on our platform. Our first parties are important here, but the third-party relationships are a critical aspect, and we have strong business relationships with EA, Activision, Take-Two, Capcom... you can go through the whole list, and we have a long, long relationship [with them], and they have shipped thousands of pieces of content on our platform."
Tror du at xCloud har den bedste chance blandt de forskellige konkurrenter?