Jorge Neumann made an unsurprising statement that games would benefit greatly from the cloud service, even taking into account storage space.
According to Newman, Microsoft's Flight Simulator already relies heavily on data stored in the cloud, “We have 2.5 petabytes of air data at our disposal, of course it is not possible to install such a large amount, so we stream it” – Mr. explained. With a similar solution, the elevation map or airport details are added to the game, as written by A. PCGamer.
This approach is based on a different concept than cloud gaming (like Geforce Now), since the player's device does the computing and publishing tasks, but the necessary data (at least some of it) can be downloaded and streamed from the cloud and used by the target devices. According to the developer, using this method, they want and can reduce one of the bottlenecks, which is back-end storage. The more stuff the client receives, the less space is required on the player's device. The most important data is installed, which expects fast access. The rest is downloaded from the servers as needed. Since they are already using this solution in full swing, it can be said that it can work stably and meet the expectations associated with it.
Microsoft is at the forefront of cloud-based technology, so it is not unexpected that an internal studio could take advantage of this possibility. At the same time, legitimate concerns may arise among gamers: what happens in case of slowdowns or interruptions in the Internet connection, or perhaps a problem with the servers? The interesting question is whether the case of Flight Simulator will be an inspiration for other developers, because nowadays it is not uncommon for a game to require more than 100 GB of storage space, which in the case of many similar games can quickly saturate the available capacity, for example the maximum download capacity of a PlayStation is around 800 GB.