Microsoft may soon offer free Xbox Cloud Gaming with ads
Could Microsoft be about to roll out free Xbox Cloud Gaming with ads? Recent remarks from Xbox CFO Tim Stuart seem to suggest the possibility. Speaking at last month’s Wells Fargo TMT Summit Stuart touched on the subject, saying he believes the model could work in certain markets.
“It also helps us, maybe lastly, on geographic expansion. The vision I like to talk about is we have xCloud game streaming, so you can subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate and you can stream hundreds of games to really any endpoint that has a browser experience.
“For models like Africa, or India, Southeast Asia, maybe places that aren’t console-first, you can say, ‘hey, do you want to watch 30 seconds of an ad and then get two hours of game streaming?’
“Africa is, you know, 50% of the population is 23 years old or younger with a growing disposable income base, all with cell phones and mobile devices, not a lot of high-end disposable income, generally-speaking.
“So we can go in with our own business models and say…there’s millions and millions of gamers we would never have been able to address there, and now we can go in with our business models.”
In this Xbox might be taking a cue from Netflix, which rolled out a free ad-supported tier a year ago. Called Netflix Basic, the ad tier quickly gained traction and now has over 15 million subscribers.
Of course, video games are a very different medium. While we’re all used to seeing ads in video content, how they might go over with gamers is hard to say. Nevertheless, Xbox sees this as a viable option to say the least. How do you feel about the idea of free Xbox Cloud Gaming with ads? Would you subscribe? Sound off down in the comments.
