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The story
According to IGN, Xbox has secured exclusive rights to cloud-stream “GTA6.” While overseas gaming communities greeted the news in a celebratory mood, Japan’s 5ch hardware/industry (“Geha”) board erupted into debate over just how practical the deal actually is. Buying the Xbox version of the game and paying for a monthly Game Pass subscription gets you cloud play, but only 15 hours are free — go over that and you’ll need to pay extra. Some praised it as a way to jump into the game early without waiting for the PC release, while others, comparing it to PS5’s cloud features and GeForce Now, dismissed it as a “hollow exclusive.” Opinions were split.
It’s a party overseas
Source: x.com / Original post here
What people said
It's for the PC-master-race types who don't own a PS or Xbox but are desperate to force their way into playing GTA6 on PC from launch day.
Well, GeForce Now isn't even an option in the first place since there's no PC version yet.
Wasn't PS's cloud streaming limited to its own hardware anyway, like the PS Portal?
So this "exclusive" doesn't really amount to much either way.
This is probably just about GeForce Now not being an option regardless.
Though Xbox's cloud has a time limit, so it's kind of pointless anyway.
PS's cloud service feels so flaky that even ToHeart2 (an old visual novel) had hours-long queue waits — can it really handle GTA's load?
I thought MS figured it couldn't handle it and moved to a separate service for that reason.
Yeah, that's probably it.
And the thing is, Xbox's own cloud service is garbage anyway, so this whole exclusive thing is pointless.
Nah, the quality isn't actually bad.
They're splitting it off into its own cloud plan, so…
Then again, maybe they had no choice but to separate it from Game Pass precisely because it can't handle GTA's load.
but that only gets you 15 hours, so you need the cloud plan on top of that too.
And of course once the PC version drops you'll have to buy it all over again, plus there's no disc so you can't even resell it, bro.
Hmm, the target audience for this seems pretty tiny lol
Even setting aside the flaws everyone's already pointed out, there's still a decent number of people without the right hardware who just want to dip a toe in.
For a title this huge,
some of them might end up buying an actual Xbox console too — so regardless of whether the exclusivity deal's cost was worth it, there's upside for both the game and the hardware side.
There'll be queue waits, it'll probably end up metered, and since it's running on xCloud the graphics will be downgraded too.
You'd be better off just buying a PS.
But they don't own a PS5 — that's the whole point.
But if you're willing to wait that long anyway, feels like you might as well just buy a console.
No, the whole point is you no longer have to wait for the PC version.
But still — you buy the game at full price, pay for the cloud service itself, and then pay even more past 15 hours a month.
And for anyone who already owns a PC, cloud streaming is basically all downside since it's at the mercy of your internet connection.
Whether anyone actually picks cloud under these conditions remains to be seen.
I doubt streaming straight from the console itself would be restricted, but it could still throw a wrench into any marketing built around "works with just the Portal."
Remote Play isn't cloud streaming, so it wouldn't be affected by this restriction.
There's no real way to restrict it anyway.
Surely they'd sign some kind of deal.
Though I don't really know.
Right now only two platforms are even planned, and one of them is reportedly getting exclusive rights.
If you're going to pray for anything, you'd have better odds hoping IGN, Tom Warren, and Wario64 are all high and having a mass hallucination.
They're specifically making people buy through the Microsoft Store, so maybe they're planning to flip on Play Anywhere the moment the PC version launches?
But would people really be okay buying the game and only being able to play it via cloud? The high-spec-PC master race is just going to buy it all over again once the PC version comes out anyway.
Given this whole push, it's hard to imagine they wouldn't steer people toward the Microsoft Store version — but then again, this is Rockstar we're talking about.
Oh wait, didn't they sign some kind of blanket deal with Take-Two?
but with cloud gaming, nothing is left behind at all.
Even the data sitting on your hard drive is basically a rental — you don't actually own it either way.
Have people even stopped talking about Sony's situation at this point?
They use Amazon's too, you know.
Do you even need to buy the Xbox version of the game in the first place?
And how's cloud gaming these days anyway — is it actually comfortable to play?
I'd think your own home internet connection would be a factor too, though.
It's functionally the same thing as GeForce Now,
and that's already proven not to take off.
Kind of a shame that the ones stuck behind the barrier only get the censored one.
It's the time limit that's the real restriction.
Background and Key Points of Debate
Cloud gaming works by running the game on the provider’s servers and streaming only the video output to your device, so a stable, always-on internet connection is essential to play. The thread’s complaint that “GeForce Now isn’t an option” actually stems from a separate technical issue: since the PC version of GTA6 hasn’t been released yet, there’s nothing for NVIDIA’s service to license in the first place — unrelated to Xbox Cloud Gaming’s exclusivity deal itself. Xbox’s cloud service has also long had a free-play time cap, and this GTA6 cloud offering is expected to operate within that same limit, which is why much of the thread’s frustration centered on this “double cost” of buying the game and then being charged again by the hour. Meanwhile, PS5’s cloud features are built mainly around streaming to Sony’s own hardware, like the console itself or the PS Portal, so its positioning differs from Xbox’s, making a straightforward comparison of which is “better” difficult. It’s worth noting that the details and duration of the exclusivity deal hadn’t been disclosed at the time of reporting, so some of what’s discussed in the thread is speculation.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry, aka “Geha”) thread “Xbox Secures Exclusive GTA6 Cloud Rights.”
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