No not Puck the fairy. Or a bounty puck from The Mandalorian. Or a hockey puck. Just a streaming puck for you to play games on.
Microsoft might be making an aggressive new push for game streaming with new ways to stream Xbox Cloud Gaming titles without owning an Xbox or PC. Venturebeat is reporting that Microsoft is planning to release a "streaming puck" sometime in the next 12 months, as well as an Xbox Cloud Gaming app for Samsung TVs.
Both would allow users to stream Xbox Cloud Gaming titles to their televisions. The streaming puck would be similar to a Roku or Amazon Fire Stick device that connects to the TV's HDMI port, and would also allow owners to stream TV and movies as well.
Microsoft's moves to push Xbox Cloud Gaming out into the world have taken an aggressive turn in the last few months. Just yesterday it announced a version of Fortnite for Xbox Cloud Gaming that would let users play the game on iOS devices once again. During GDC 2022, it showed off new cloud technology that would let developers make games using Azure-hosted workstations, and earlier this year, it revealed that "cloud-native" Microsoft Flight Simulator would join Xbox Cloud Gaming.
Technology used to get Microsoft Flight Simulator working on the cloud game platform is also being made available to developers looking to make games that rely on cloud computing.
It is starting to look like Microsoft's bid to get new players into its ecosystem without purchasing an expensive device may be bearing fruit. It also announced late last year that 20 percent of Xbox Cloud Gaming users playing on mobile devices do so using touch controls.
We've reached out to Microsoft for comment on this report, and will update this story when the company responds.
If you'd like some additional analysis on how Xbox Cloud Gaming is going, Omdia analyst George Jijiashvili (disclaimer: Omdia is a sibling organization of Game Developer under parent company Informa) took a look at Microsoft's claim of 10 million users streaming games on Xbox Cloud Gaming.
Update: When queried by Game Developer, a Microsoft spokesperson said that the company "does not comment on rumors or speculation.”
Seems pretty trickster-y. Maybe it is Puck the fairy after all.
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