Nvidia’s GeForce now, meanwhile, doesn’t technically offer any games. You have to buy the compatible titles on your own through PC storefronts such as Steam, Origin and the Epic Games Store. GeForce now is free but sessions are limited to an hour and you often have to wait for a remote machine to become available. You can, however, pay $4.99 per month for a Founders membership that ups the sessions limit to six hours, gives you priority access, and turns on Nvidia’s RTX ray-tracing acceleration.

xCloud, therefore, will have the highest cost of entry. It’s part of a broader Game Pass package, though, that arguably offers greater value. Today, Spencer said "over 100 Xbox Game Pass titles" would be available to play via xCloud. He also reiterated that all first-party Xbox titles will launch on Game Pass the same day as their global release. It’s not clear, though, exactly which games will be xCloud compatible. Well, beyond a certain shooter featuring Master Chief, anyway. “When Halo Infinite launches, you and your friends can play together and immerse yourselves in the Halo universe as Master Chief,” he teased today, “anywhere you go and across devices.”

Microsoft’s game streaming service is currently in closed preview for Android smartphones and tablets. It’s not clear if the company has any plans to extend the offering to other devices. Stadia, for instance, works in Chrome and through Chromecast Ultra dongles. Microsoft has a family of Xbox consoles, of course, which cater to the living room, and a desktop operating system that runs the vast majority of PCs and laptops around the world. Not everyone has the cash for an Xbox, though, or a PC capable of running the latest games at max resolution. It will be interesting, therefore, to see if or how the company tries to plug that gap in the future.