Xbox caps cloud gaming at 15 hours a month for
Game Pass subscribers
Xbox is introducing strict monthly time limits for Game
Pass subscribers who stream games online through its
cloud gaming service.
The changes, which come into effect in November, will
see a subscriber to the £16.99 Ultimate monthly plan
able to stream games for up to 15 hours a month - before
having to purchase additional cloud play time.
Xbox said the limits were due to the rising cost of cloud
gaming, and they would allow the firm to "continue to
invest" in the service's "reliability and performance".
While some questioned whether the service was used by
many to begin with, others called out the additional limits
for subscribers.
Cloud gaming allows players to stream and play games
online from a remote server using a phone, tablet or
controller, rather than downloading and running it on a
PC or console at home.
Different tiers of subscription to Game Pass will have
different limits.
Premium users will get 10 hours, while those on the basic
Essential tier will get five hours a month before they have
to pay for extra time.
Xbox claimed just 4% of the people who use Games
Pass - its Netflix-style subscription plan for games - use
its cloud gaming service.
A recent Wall Street Journal article reported Game Pass
has 30 million subscribers, which would leave the number
of people affected by the cloud gaming changes at
roughly 1.2 million.
"This is a pretty awful change, hopefully Xbox adds an
extra zero on the end cause 15hrs is abysmal. 30
minutes a day, really?" posted one commenter on X.
Jez Corden of Windows Central told the BBC the
announcement showed that "absolutely nothing is safe
from the AI-driven component crisis," but he added it also
highlighted "where Microsoft's priorities are".
Both cloud gaming and AI use the same infrastructure -
data centres - to process information.
"For them to continue to offer unlimited access to
Microsoft Copilot [AI] for free but restrict paid cloud
gaming in this way shows some contradiction," he added.
Xbox said in a blog post that from November, users
would also be able to use the company's cloud gaming
feature without subscribing to Game Pass, but by buying
"cloud playtime hours" through the Xbox store.
It has not revealed how much extra hours of cloud
gaming would cost.
Xbox's 'reset'
The news comes as Asha Sharma, Xbox's chief
executive, told the BBC in an exclusive recent interview
that the company and the industry as a whole needed to
"start to innovate on affordability and efficiency," amid a
"crisis" in computing prices.
"As an industry, we're in the middle of 'Rampocalypse'.
We're in the middle of people coming back from Covid
and the patterns changing," she said.
"Rampocalypse" refers to the fact that the cost of a
previously cheap hardware component, random access
memory (Ram), has shot up in price with the expansion
of compute-hungry data centres. Some people also call it
"Ramageddon".
Sharma added: "Within Xbox, we haven't been healthy.
And so a lot of the reset that will take us throughout the
year is really meant to help ensure that we are here for
the next 25 years and we're continuing to serve our
purpose and our mission."
According to Xbox owner Microsoft's July financial filings,
annual Xbox revenue dropped by $1.7bn to roughly
$21.8bn (£16.1bn) - a 7% decline from 2025.
Part of Sharma's reset has seen 3,200 people let go at
the company - with 1,600 job losses announced in July,
and the remaining posts to go gradually over the course
of Microsoft's 2027 financial year.
Studios which had been acquired by Xbox - including
Compulsion Games, which made the Bafta-winning
South of Midnight and Double Fine Productions, makers
of Psychonauts - were also made independent again.
Sharma is betting these changes can reverse its fortunes
despite concerns over its subscription strategy and rising
AI-related costs.
"Sometimes you have to restructure a business when it's
not doing well, and that was true with our Xbox
business," Microsoft's president Brad Smith recently told
the BBC.
Cloud gaming
In an interview in July, Jeff Gattiss, Amazon's head of gaming, told the BBC he believed the rising cost of tech
would mean people will turn to streaming games online
rather than buying new consoles.
However, despite some big names investing in the
technology, it has never fully reached the mainstream.
Google launched its own cloud gaming service Stadia in
November 2019, positioning it as a "Netflix for games".
The service was discontinued in January 2023 after the
company said it had not attracted as many users as
hoped.
For many gamers, cloud gaming remains too unreliable
for regular use due to its reliance on high-speed internet -
and an additional fee may further limit its appeal.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj06zd4l99lo
A student must write a one-sentence factual summary of
the main subscription change announced in the article.
Select the CORRECT sentence.
