Got lunch plans? Microsoft will discuss its next video game console and cloud streaming service at length today.
A livestream that starts at 11:55 a.m. PT/2:55 p.m. ET on Wednesday, March 18, includes a panel titled “Xbox Series X + Project xCloud = New Chapter in Gaming.” You can catch it on the official Microsoft Game Stack website and YouTube channel.
The panel stream is part of Microsoft’s plans following the postponement of the Game Developers Conference. The company hasn’t said who will be featured in the panel, but it will be one of the longer Game Stack talks running for just over an hour, according to the official schedule. Most other Game Stack presentations only last between 15 to 25 minutes.
This Xbox Series X and Project xCloud panel comes just days after Microsoft unveiled the full specs for the upcoming console, which will release this holiday season. Microsoft revealed its next-generation gaming system will use a 1TB solid-state drive and will be based around fancy ray tracing-boosting AMD’s Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architectures, though the same will go for Sony’s PlayStation 5. That’s in addition to the true 4K gaming at up to 120 frames per second Microsoft players will experience with plans to support 8K resolutions.
Other Game Stack talks taking place today include developers inXile, which will discuss how iteration has impacted its Wasteland series of post-apocalyptic role-playing games; Double Fine, which will talk about game jams importance to creativity; and the Gears Tactics team will explain how to optimize games for PC. Replays of previous talks on topics including accessible gaming and intentional inclusivity in game design can be found on the Microsoft Game Stack YouTube channel.
While there’s no official description for the talk — which was originally scheduled to take place at GDC 2020 until the event was postponed due to the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus, officially named COVID-19 — the title suggests we’ll learn more about how Project xCloud and how it will integrate with the Series X.
Microsoft revealed its cloud streaming service two years ago at E3 2018, which just launched on iOS earlier this year. Similar to Nvidia GeForce Now and Google Stadia, xCloud aims to allow players to stream the PC and console games they own across multiple devices.
