The cloud gaming dream is dying - XBOX places limits on XBOX Cloud Gaming

"Our service is so bad, making it worse will have no effect!" - Microslop, probably

good riddance, maybe one small benefit of the ai bubble will be the demise of this as a concept. really hoping we'll start to see some plateauing of graphics hardware in general. was such a good period during the early PS4 era

Good! Because that was no dream of mine. Not even having a games data but only streaming it from an online platform? No thank you.

Unfortunately there will be plenty of users though who will eat it up and see it as another Netflix subscription which theyvdeem worth it due to them actually not playing more than 15h a month.

Geforce Now is at least PC hardware, Xbox cloud gaming is running on Xbox Series X hardware.

15h per month is such a low limit. GeForce Now at least provides 100h, which IMHO is fine.

Last edited by ContainerRunner on 4 Sep 2026 at 8:54 am UTC

That's one of the direct consequences of digital only. They can just put up new terms and conditions like that and you're left with nothing. Imagine if Spotify and the like would introduce auch time limits.

I have several friends that are primarily PC gamers but use older systems with GPUs like the GTX 1050 Ti.
Obviously pretty much any new AAA game is a non-starter. Yet we still have a ton of fun gaming together in games that run on systems like that. And they never made use of cloud streaming.

I have no idea how much this represents the market but with statistics claiming that increasingly more PC players are spending more time in older or cheaper titles, I could see a potential correlation.

People that would rather keep their old hardware around and only play titles that run on their system instead of giving in to streaming. I think the wide range of available hardware, from crappy office PC to high-end gaming machine, has been one of the main reasons why PC gaming has been so successful. Combined with the decades of titles and a huge indie scene, you'll always be able to play something regardless of your device's age.

Makes me just a little hopeful that enough people won't give in.

There is huge difference with Geforce NOW.

Microsoft said that this 5-10 hour limits only affect 4% of the players, meaning bovody reallu uses it (maybe just for OG Cbox games). When Nvidia introduced 100 hour limit for Geforce NOW, they said it affected only 6% of customers.

Only Ultimate tier is 1440p on Zbox Cloud, rest are 1080p. Geforce NOW Ultimate tier is 5K with RTX 5080, Performance tier is equivalent to consoles with 1440p and free tier is 1080 with 1 hour sessions.

My guess is that with next-gen Xbox (Project Helix), they'll try to emulate OG Xbox games locally and will close Xbox Cloud down.

So... Microsoft's stance is: "The more users we have (let's pretend it's true), the more limited the service will be"?
Masterclass in how to shoot yourself in the foot. Enshitification at its best! 🤣

Last edited by Mohandevir on 4 Sep 2026 at 12:28 pm UTC

Well...

I got nothing more to say, just: "Well" (read it like a: "Whoa!, that's quite a leash.")

Nothing against options like the could gaming, nothing against people looking for the best convenience to them. But let me tell this; I'm happy seeing cloud services not being as popular as (some) companies are trying to impose.

Microsoft continues down its extremely aggressive, angry, deluded, stupid mission to absolutely fucking BURN DOWN every single thing it can related to the entire gaming industry. I don't really know why Microsoft hates gaming and gamers so much, but it REALLY does. Like the brainrotted ceos must wake up every morning and just start the day off seething with unmmitigated anger towards all games and gamers all over the entire planet. Then they go into the office and spend every single minute trying to destroy everything and make people as miserable as possible.

I am glad to see them die. Let's be honest, had they been successful, we wouldn't be able to buy local games in 10 years anymore. Publishers would have loved to force all of us to rent instead of buy, and keep 100% control on what we can or cannot do with our games. You cannot tell me for a single second that they wouldn't have phased out purchasable games the same we they phased out physical copies. I am glad that in this one case, we seem to have rejected being sheep.

"This is only an xbox for 15 hours"

Quoting: KimyrielleI am glad to see them die. Let's be honest, had they been successful, we wouldn't be able to buy local games in 10 years anymore. Publishers would have loved to force all of us to rent instead of buy, and keep 100% control on what we can or cannot do with our games. You cannot tell me for a single second that they wouldn't have phased out purchasable games the same we they phased out physical copies. I am glad that in this one case, we seem to have rejected being sheep.

That was probably the original goal, but they must have realized that they needed that same infrastructure for that AI slop. When the bubble will burst, they will probably come back to that plan...🤔

Edit: Unfortunately, AI (or LLM) is here to stay, imo, but the way these irresponsible headless chickens are going "full speed ahead" for the construction of these data centers, no matter the means or the costs, will comme crashing, at some point. It's just unsustainable and outright fraudulous.

Last edited by Mohandevir on 4 Sep 2026 at 3:43 pm UTC

Quoting: MohandevirSo... Microsoft's stance is: "The more users we have (let's pretend it's true), the more limited the service will be"?
Masterclass in how to shoot yourself in the foot. Enshitification at its best! 🤣

Technically, I don't think this is enshittification. Classic enshittification is a thing that happens after a platform wins. Once the customers are dependent on and sort of entangled in the platform, and the outfits that use the platform to sell to the platform's customers have nowhere else to go for customers, the company squeezes both for money, information and so on.

This seems more like when a brick-and-mortar store is going downhill and you start noticing the cleaning isn't being done as much, the merchandise is old and not changing much because they can't afford to ditch inventory and buy new, and you can never find a clerk to help you out.

Quoting: KimyrielleI am glad to see them die. Let's be honest, had they been successful, we wouldn't be able to buy local games in 10 years anymore. Publishers would have loved to force all of us to rent instead of buy, and keep 100% control on what we can or cannot do with our games. You cannot tell me for a single second that they wouldn't have phased out purchasable games the same we they phased out physical copies. I am glad that in this one case, we seem to have rejected being sheep.

The subscription mode of software sales has been the unholy grail of software companies since forever, and it has been mostly failing since forever. Adobe is currently managing, but I do wonder how long they'll be able to keep that up before they hit real competition.

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: MohandevirSo... Microsoft's stance is: "The more users we have (let's pretend it's true), the more limited the service will be"?
Masterclass in how to shoot yourself in the foot. Enshitification at its best! 🤣

Technically, I don't think this is enshittification. Classic enshittification is a thing that happens after a platform wins. Once the customers are dependent on and sort of entangled in the platform, and the outfits that use the platform to sell to the platform's customers have nowhere else to go for customers, the company squeezes both for money, information and so on.

This seems more like when a brick-and-mortar store is going downhill and you start noticing the cleaning isn't being done as much, the merchandise is old and not changing much because they can't afford to ditch inventory and buy new, and you can never find a clerk to help you out.

They just skipped the winning part because they tought they didn't need it? 🤣
Seriously, Microsoft is its worst enemy and it's getting worst, by the day. That's all there is to say.

Last edited by Mohandevir on 5 Sep 2026 at 3:29 am UTC

"Everything is an XBox"... Just for a little while 😆

I'm guessing they're trying to kill the service (long run)

I'm sure this isn't because gamers are using it too much. They just need to free up some more resources for their AI activities. Blaming the users is just typical corporate drivel.