Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Microsoft currently offers free access to Fortnite on its Xbox Cloud Gaming service (xCloud), but there are signs the company may offer free game streaming in exchange for ads. Microsoft Gaming CFO Tim Stuart hinted at this prospect in a Wells Fargo TMT Summit interview late last month, spotted by TweakTown.
“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,” explained Stuart. “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?’”
Stuart’s spitballing…