Microsoft says its game streaming service has an advantage thanks to Xbox

Things are starting to feel crowded as more and more companies try to pitch their “Netflix for games” cloud-based streaming services, but Microsoft says the experience it’s gained through its Xbox branch gives it a potential leg up on the competition.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spoke to Business Insider and other publications earlier this week on the subject of the game streaming service, Project xCloud, the company announced late last year, saying that both its Xbox dealings and its growing list of Microsoft-owned and published games put the project in a strong position.

"We have a structural position in that we have both a console business as well as a PC business, which happens to be bigger than the console business when it comes to gaming,” he said.

As mentioned by Business Insider, Nadella also called out its experience with Xbox Live and the company’s history of synergy between its Windows and Xbox video game branches through things like its Xbox Play Anywhere program. “We have as much a shot to build a subscription service as anybody else.”

Microsoft’s Project xCloud aims to, like many others in the cloud-based game service space, let people play video games on demand from a variety of platforms while the actual game is being hosted on a remote machine. The goal is to launch the service with the capability to stream games on 4G networks, ideally opening PC and Xbox One-only games up to players that primarily use mobile phones to play games. 

Other companies have dabbled in the same kinds of projects, with Google notably testing its Project Stream service that can stream triple-A games like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey through a Google Chrome browser window. Verizon and Amazon are also rumored to have their own game streaming services in the works, though official details on both are still scarce.