If I were in a fight with a much bigger opponent who was most definitely winning, and they suddenly shot themselves in the foot, I would not then take the gun and do the same to myself. And yet, that is exactly what Xbox has done in their long-standing feud with PlayStation with their Cloud gaming announcement.

With Sony taking a publicity beating over their decision to bin off physical discs, you would think Xbox would just enjoy the show. Instead, they have caused a controversy of their own. Cloud gaming time will now be limited in relation to your Game Pass tier. And the limits are frankly disgusting.

There is almost no point in cloud gaming at these limits

Essential tiers will be 5 hours, Premium will receive 10, and the most expensive tier, Ultimate, gets 15. Per month. Not per week, which would be almost acceptable. But around half an hour per day. Or less in a 31-day month, as my friend pointed out.

Of course, if you want more cloud gaming time, you can always pay. Money talks, as always. I have spoken a bit in the past about how much I hate Nvidia GeForce for having exactly this model. Why would someone subscribe to a service, then have to pay again to use it? But even then at least the Nvidia cap was 100 hours. The FFXIV Companion App has the same issue. Those Kupo Nuts can get shoved.

It is like video games that launch with paid DLC available; just include it. It is incredibly greedy, everyone hates it, and yet Xbox just powered on anyway. I am also not a fan of the timing. This is a massive change that could push people away from Xbox, so they waited until after the 25th Anniversary Xbox went on sale.

Xbox has a history of shady timing

Even worse than that is the TCL deal. If you are unaware, TCL has teamed up with Xbox to bring Game Pass to their TVs. Obviously, this will be a cloud feature, and it was announced after Xbox revealed the cloud restrictions. So TCL didn’t even get a day of increased sales before Xbox basically made the deal redundant.

Why would they? Xbox already got paid for the deal, I presume; the timing won’t hurt their pockets. But if an announcement might damage Xbox sales, you can bet they will wait to screw consumers first. They did the same thing with the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally. Waited for pre-orders to sell out, and then upped the Game Pass prices, something vital to that piece of hardware.

When I bought an Xbox, I did it for Starfield. I stayed for Game Pass. It is incredible; the games are much superior to PS Plus, which I also have, but only because I keep forgetting to cancel it. I would never cancel Game Pass; hell, I stuck with the highest tier during the dark times of price increases. I love it; that’s what I am saying.

Why is Xbox making its most attractive quality less desirable?

I can’t be the only one, which is why this move is even worse. A big draw of Game Pass is playing your games anywhere with your synced saves and your huge digital library. And yes, whilst most of our gaming is done on the console, having cloud gaming on any device is a massive bonus. I don’t understand why, now of all times, Xbox wants to damage Game Pass even more than they have lately. I presume losing Day 1 Call of Duty bothered a lot of people, though I couldn’t give a damn about that series if I tried.

Morally, it is disgusting, not to mention for the obvious financial reasons. We are watching the slow decline of gaming with rising console prices, less money for people to spend on things with the ever-increasing cost of living, studios closing, and stuff like this just hurts. I don’t want to see the day that all that is left is Fortnite.

There are reasons why Xbox cloud gaming is a hindrance

For the sake of fairness, let’s look at the other side, because there are some good points. Xbox is struggling, and Sharma has a huge task to bring it back. A lot of the decisions suck, like the layoffs and studio closures, but it was never going to be easy. And despite everything, I still do support her and think she is doing the necessary evils.

Now let’s look at the magic number that is going around. 5%. This is the amount of players that Xbox say actually use cloud gaming. Let’s assume 300 million monthly users, because I saw reports ranging from 200 to 500; that is 15 million people using cloud gaming. In a vacuum, massive, but compared to 300 million?

Servers can’t be cheap to run, and if you are only doing it for a fraction of your player base, it would be tempting to cut it, especially if the running cost doesn’t exceed revenue. That’s basic business; I would kick each of those 15 million people off a cliff personally. But we don’t know that ratio between running cost and revenue, so it is a hard one to judge.

No reason can justify this severe limit right from the start

Both sides have good points, but I think the outcry boils down to one number: 15 hours. At the highest tier. If you want to cap it, fine, but half an hour a day? Of course people will be angry. There is something to say about setting your stall out early, but my god, at least start at 30 hours and work down. Give us an hour a day and slowly reduce it. You will annoy people, but I think I would have preferred a slow burn to having lava flung in my face out of nowhere.

Will Xbox survive this? Probably. That 25th Anniversary console must have brought in a mountain of cash. I certainly couldn’t find one. The bad taste will linger, though. They are trying to climb out of a hole right now, but if Xbox lose all the goodwill of gamers with stunts like this, then who’s going to greet them at the top?