Earlier today, Microsoft released a blog post sharing the company’s thoughts on the gaming industry and its focus for gaming in 2021 and beyond. Microsoft’s goal has changed for the Xbox team and its gaming initiatives from focusing more on a specific platform (i.e the Xbox consoles) to being focused on multiple platforms, specifically the PC.
Microsoft’s end goal is to be a ‘player first’ company, focusing more on the game rather than the platform it’s on. This means that we’ll be seeing more and more features being focused on the PC platform, and not just the Xbox consoles alone.
This is good news for PC gamers is that Microsoft is now focusing more than ever before on the PC gaming ecosystem, which hopefully means more and more gaming optimizations for the PC and more cross-play potential, which is what Microsoft also highlighted in its blog post.
For example, Microsoft shares more details on Halo Infinite which is getting a significant amount of PC development time and will fully support features such as ultrawide (21:9) and super ultrawide (32:9) screens, triple keybinds, and higher fidelity graphics which will be PC exclusive.
Plus, Halo infinite will also have cross-play capabilities with PC and the latest Xbox Series X/S consoles.
Microsoft is also expanding its cloud gaming services to allow any device to stream over 100 console games to your PC. A few days ago, Microsoft announced the beta for its cloud gaming service, and it will work with both Windows 10 devices and Apple iOS devices through web browsers such as Edge, Chrome, and Safari.
As for developers, Microsoft is adding more features to give developers an easier time making games for PCs. Currently, there’s a new DirectX12 feature called the Agility SDK, allowing developers to push the latest DirectX 12 features and updates to their games without the end user (player) requiring an operating system update.
Microsoft is also working on other features like Auto HDR technology and continuing to work on DirectStorage technology, which was an Xbox exclusive feature but is now being developed for the PC.
These are just some of the features Microsoft addressed in its blog post, but overall it’s great to see Microsoft focusing on the PC player experience just as much as on the Xbox consoles.