Xbox will soon impose monthly limits on game streaming time through its Xbox Game Pass membership.
Starting in November, the following caps will be placed on Game Pass’ Xbox Cloud Gaming feature:
- Game Pass Ultimate — 15 hours/month
- Game Pass Premium — 10 hours/month
- Game Pass Essential — 5 hours/month
Xbox says those who use up their allotted time will be able to purchase additional hours, although exact pricing and availability will come in November. During that month, the company says it will also begin to offer the option to buy cloud playtime hours for select titles they own, even if you’re not subscribed to Game Pass.
“We’re introducing this model because the cost of providing cloud gaming grows as more people use it and play for longer,” wrote Xbox. “Moving to monthly limits allows us to keep offering the service while continuing to invest in its reliability and performance. We understand that for some players the practical result is a higher cost.”
This is a notable move from the company, which has long offered unlimited streaming time through Xbox Cloud Gaming. And beyond that, streaming was regularly touted as a key pillar of Xbox’s wider gaming strategy, with the company de-emphasizing exclusivity in favour of a “This is an Xbox” multiplatform approach that allowed people to stream games on various devices, from consoles and PC to mobile, TVs and even VR. The company has since been trying to walk some of that back and focus on console exclusives like Gears of War: E-Day from Vancouver’s The Coalition, but it’s likely too little, too late.
Xbox’s blog post also reveals a pretty damning statistic regarding Xbox Cloud Gaming: the company only expects these changes to affect about four per cent of overall Game Pass subscribers. In other words, it certainly seems like very few people were even streaming Xbox games that much in the first place.
But hey, we have to cut Xbox some slack. Sure, Microsoft might be a trillion-dollar company, but it somehow can’t afford to keep its staff, laying off thousands of Xbox employees, including those with decades of experience. No, it needs to instead invest US$200 billion (about C$275 billion) into AI data centres this year alone, naturally. But not to make AI slop, mind you — CEO Satya Nadella gets upset if you use that word.
Source: Xbox
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