Microsoft xCloud and Google Stadia: Why I can not compare them for the moment

Cloud gaming is the undeniable shadow that is changing the industry of this year's E3 video game conference. Coupled with the ramping up of subscription services, the idea of ​​running games from remote servers might not only change how they are read, distributed, and sold, but even how games are developed. thanks to the promise of running software from multiple consoles attached together.

The two leaders of the race are Google and Microsoft, two of the most powerful companies in the technology sector and two of the largest players in the cloud computing market. Both have the infrastructure, expertise, and resources to launch the game in the cloud. That's what we're seeing right now as Microsoft, xCloud, and Google Stadia move from new prototypes to full-fledged products. Both platforms were present at E3 and I had to try them both. In theory, this allows me to give you a glimpse of the future of the game in the cloud.

This is perhaps the part of the article where you would expect a practical comparison of xCloud and Stadia, with a list of pros and cons, as which service will have more and better games. You may have already read an article or two comparing latency levels and debating the winner of the impending race in the cloud.

I will not do that. I have concrete impressions with Stadia and xCloud: they both work, they are both impressive and I will share more below. But you can not properly compare xCloud to Stadia at the moment, and trying to do so is unfair to Microsoft and Google.

Here's why.

Image: Google

Even if Microsoft wants xCloud to be as ambitious as Stadia, it's impossible to ignore that these are fundamentally different platforms with different goals and a very different level of readiness. For example, the xCloud demo shown in the Microsoft Theater movie theater was just a handful of smartphones, playing various Xbox One games like Halo 5: Guardians and Forza Horizon 4. Each was attached to foldable controller handles. So you could orient the screen appropriately, then hold the joystick to play.

It worked smoothly, with minimal or no latency, and at a resolution of 720p and 60 frames per second. That said, xCloud's readiness basically stops at "it works," which may be due to the fact that Microsoft is basically lagging behind Google.

Microsoft announced xCloud last year in October, around the same time that Google launched public testing of its beta version of Project Stream, which would lay the groundwork for Stadia. At the gaming developer conference in March, Google had already made a sensational revelation. He has already organized a virtual press conference to announce the prize, the release date and the Stadia games earlier this month. Microsoft is not that far away, and perhaps for good reason: cloud gaming is an unproven technology with a dubious business model, and many elements need to be in place if it is to compete with consoles, mobile games or downloaded games. titles on PC.

Microsoft also has different goals for xCloud at the moment. The company primarily designs the platform to stream Xbox games to mobile devices, which you can then use with a controller or touch screen interface, as Microsoft has explained to the GDC again. Microsoft has not yet shared a template on how xCloud would be packaged and sold, how the games would end up on the platform, or how xCloud is supposed to go beyond mobile devices and operate on TVs, laptops or streaming decoders. . We will not see a public test of xCloud until October, and it's just to assume that it will be much further by here, we do not know it and we can not assume that it will simply be a technical test to test. The viability of xCloud – a full year after Google did the same.

Google's Stage is basically the other end of the spectrum of cloud games. It is designed to work primarily on browser windows and via a Chromecast television dongle, although it supports Pixel devices at launch. In Google's eyes, it's also ready for prime time. It will launch a "Founder Edition" package and subscription in November, and create a free level accessible to all by 2020. Games will be bundled with a Stadia Pro subscription. They could also be purchased directly and used on the platform were a console or a PC. You will also be able to access subscription services from other companies on Stadia, such as UPlay Pro, recently announced by Ubisoft.

Picture of Nick Statt / The Verge

None of this, however, means that Google is necessarily in a better position. Microsoft is in fact in a fantastic location to take advantage of all aspects of its business once the cloud game is ready.

The Azure cloud platform allows it to run xCloud, an Xbox Game Pass subscription that delivers games, and a new generation console called Project Scarlett that, when linked and integrated with an Azure data center, could offer performance comparable to or better than that of the system. 10.7 teraflops Google is promising with Stadia. Microsoft also has the built-in developer base and relationships to support – even if Google has poached many PlayStation experts with Sony – and Xbox head Phil Spencer even said at the time. press conference on Xbox E3 last week that any studio producing an Xbox The game also creates by default an xCloud title. But all that is far away. Right now, xCloud is a future beta test of a limited service that is not yet available to the public, even in six months, and even has the chance to try an early beta.

The other big problem is that ranking a gaming experience in the cloud, especially at a trade show such as E3, is just not a realistic way to say how much they will work for you or how they will work for millions of people. who can use them next year.

I've tried Stadia earlier this week on the YouTube gambling space here in downtown Los Angeles and I've been delighted with the experience. But Stadia used a wired private connection, connected to a Pixelbook, the nicest Chromebook you could buy, and streaming from a remote Google data center to an undisclosed location, under conditions entirely under Google's control.

With Microsoft, conditions were slightly more realistic, but still did not like playing at home. I need to try Halo 5 On a wireless connection, the Microsoft demo is hosted on a Microsoft data center located in SF Bay, less than 300 km from the show.

But I do not know either the speed of the Internet connection in the two demos, nor how the games I played were streamed. For example, I played Eternal Doom Stadia, but Google did not specify whether it was a PC version of the game with medium or high settings, a console version with built-in performance ceilings, or a custom version.

The xCloud demo probably streamed Forza Horizons 4 and Halo 5: Guardians directly from the Xbox One S blade servers currently used by the platform, for a more accurate comparison of the apple to the console. But I have no information on the performance of these securities; they were shooting at about 720p, because they were streaming on Android smartphones and not on HD or 4K TVs.

This leaves us with a lot of incomplete information. Comparing the latency levels of xCloud and Stadia does not mean much when Internet connections can be in completely different leagues or the test environments have radically different levels of interference. And why bother to compare the potential success of Stadia, a technically advanced platform but with only limited support from game developers, to xCloud, a less technically sophisticated platform that could, in just one year, recruit hundreds easier?

It is far too early to decide where the cloud game will go. We do not know how the economic situation will upset the developers, how full subscription services like the Xbox Game Pass will be real, nor how much consumers are hungry for services like this one. Cloud games have sometimes been described as a solution to a problem that no one currently has. And that sounds very real even after trying xCloud and Stadia and being left impressed by both.

Microsoft imagines playing your Xbox games anywhere, on any device. But now, he thinks you will do it with an Xbox controller to which your phone will be affixed via an adapter. And Google wants to be able to play on any laptop, phone or TV with a connection as slow as 10 Mbps. But who will really want to do this when they have to buy the game, not get a physical or digital copy for offline use, and are stuck within the confines of the Stadia platform?

Cloud gaming is an exciting technology that could really change everything about how we access, buy and play games. But that's the beginning, and Google and Microsoft have a long way to go before we can say that we live in this future, instead of just the appearance of its first prototypes.