It seems like Xbox truly can’t go a week without some sort of PR debacle; this time around, it’s about Xbox Cloud Gaming.
It was actually supposed to be a good week on that front: on Friday, Microsoft’s gaming division announced that the Xbox app would be coming to TCL’s popular televisions in the coming months, allowing owners of TCL Smart TVs to play Xbox gamesd LG TVs, as part of Microsoft’s attempt to bring hardcore gaming to the masses who do not own dedicated gaming devices
Of course, to actually play games through the Xbox app on TVs such as TCL’s, you need an Xbox Game Pass subscription. But on Thursday, Microsoft had just informed users that, starting in November, it would significantly reduce the monthly hours Xbox Cloud Gaming would be available across all tiers.
Previously, there were no limits, which was admittedly a bit excessive. Even NVIDIAhas introduced limits on its industry-leading GeForce NOW cloud service (which recently added support for DLSS 4.5 and DLSS 5, widening its gap over competitors). However, the new limits for Xbox Game Pass are shockingly low:
- Game Pass Ultimate: 15 hours
- Game Pass Premium: 10 hours
- Game Pass Essential: 5 hours
Microsoft says only 4% of its users will be affected by the change, but that seems a stretch. Even on the Ultimate tier, that’s barely enough to finish one average single player medium-sized game per month. For comparison, here’s NVIDIA’s far more abundant allowance, detailed in the table below.
| Tier | Session Length | Monthly Hour Cap | Rollover | Extra Hours Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | ~1 hour per session | No monthly cap, but limited to 1-hour session blocks and queue times | N/A | N/A |
| Performance | Up to 6 hours per session | 100 hours/month | Up to 15 hours | $2.99 per 15-hour block |
| Ultimate | Up to 8 hours per session | 100 hours/month | Up to 15 hours | $5.99 per 15-hour block |
Additional clarity on these changes to Xbox Cloud Gaming was provided by Windows Central’s Jez Corden, who reports that Microsoft would be losing money past that 15-hour monthly cap, and given AI’s high compute demands, they’d really rather not “waste” servers like that.
This falls within Asha Sharma’s Xbox reset. The new division CEO was open about needing to return to profitability after very disappointing margins, which she attributed to the division “overextending” itself. It may not be a huge blow to the Xbox community, as most of them weren’t playing their games in the cloud anyway, but it does show that Microsoft isn’t betting on cloud gaming nearly as much as it did a few years back.
That’s ironic, given how cloud gaming is looking like an increasingly great option as hardware prices keep rising due to the component crisis. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick recently said he believes that it will take off for good within three years, expanding the installed base tenfold. If so, it may be yet another gaming sector that Microsoft and Xbox have lost to a more savvy competitor.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief.
In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech’s gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews.
Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications.
His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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