Microsoft's ambitious vision for the future of gaming may be on the brink of fruition. With recent leaks emerging from the FTC v. Microsoft case, it's apparent that the tech giant is eyeing 2028 as the year it will achieve full convergence of its cloud gaming platform and physical hardware. This melding, which the company calls "Cohesive Hybrid Compute", could introduce "cloud hybrid games" - titles that seamlessly merge the computing power of cloud services with local hardware.
The proposed strategy revolves around the innovative premise of combining both the client's power and the cloud's vast resources. An intriguing aspect of this vision is the idea of playing these cloud hybrid games using a device priced under $99, which might even be a handheld, working harmoniously with Microsoft's xCloud platform. One can think of this as an evolution of current cloud gaming services, such as Nvidia's GeForce Now, where Microsoft doesn't just stream games but supplements the local hardware with computational power from the cloud.
Microsoft's strategic blueprint suggests they'd foreseen collaborations with AMD for the graphics and CPU cores, even incorporating ARM. Furthermore, the need for a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) is evident for enhancements like super resolution, latency compensation, and frame rate interpolation.
If the current timelines hold, the hardware designs would begin as early as next year with the development kits coming out in 2027, as per The Verge.