Microsoft is about to announce a brand new, free Cloud gaming subscription, according to a new report, but it’s going to come with a cost: you have to watch ads.
Tom Warren of The Verge has the info, claiming that reliable sources have informed him that Microsoft “has started testing ad-supported games streaming internally, allowing employees to play select titles free without a Game Pass subscription.”
The company, of course, only just announced changes to Game Pass which saw cloud streaming added to all tiers, while Ultimate’s price went up a whopping 50%. As part of the changes, Xbox Cloud Gaming finally came out of its beta phase, and got an upgrade in the form of 1440p streaming.
It’s fair to say the changes to Game Pass aren’t being received too well, though, which resulted in the Game Pass cancellation site crashing.
According to Warren, you’ll be able to stream games you own and play select titles for free on certain weekends.
Currently, the internal tests are reported as having around 2-minutes of adverts being shown before the game begins steaming.
“Microsoft is also currently testing a limit of one hour for sessions, with up to five hours free a month,” writes Warren, stressing that these limits and numbers could change by the time an official announcement is made.
Warren goes on to say that there is a place to publically test the new streaming option before it’s fully launched.
In itself, a free streaming option sounds like a decent enough option for people who don’t have a lot of money to throw around but still want to be able to play games on the go, or maybe when chilling in bed. But it sets a precedent for introducing ads, and a company like Microsoft isn’t very good at resisting the allure of money. It would not shock me if they gradually introduce ads into the regular Game Pass tiers along with an option to pay a little bit more to get rid of them, just like Amazon Prime did when it took the regular subscription and shoved ads into it.
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