Xbox’s Cloud Gaming Hour Cap Is An Embarrassment It Doesn’t Need

Xbox is trying to dig itself out of a hole as a new move by the company, a change to a service that once seemed like it could be the future of the Xbox ecosystem, has that hole caving in.

Microsoft has announced hourly caps for Xbox Cloud Gaming (Xcloud) based on a player's Game Pass tier.

• Game Pass Ultimate: 15 hours

• Game Pass Premium: 10 hours

• Game Pass Essential: 5 hours

If you don't have Game Pass, you will be able to buy cloud hours in November, when the price cap begins. There is no information on purchasing more hours past the caps, though Xbox said it will share details later, along with how to check your countdown timer on your hour bank. Here's what Xbox says:

"We're introducing this model because the cost of providing cloud gaming grows as more people use it and play for longer. Moving to monthly limits allows us to keep offering the service while continuing to invest in its reliability and performance. We understand that for some players the practical result is a higher cost."

Reportedly, these caps will affect only 4% of Game Pass users — not cloud gaming users but Game Pass users — a pretty clear signal that a low percentage of Game Pass players use cloud gaming in the first place.

Some gamers are taking this to mean that it's not a big deal because it's such a small portion of gamers. But if that's true, why would Microsoft be instituting these caps in the first place? It really speaks to how poorly this ecosystem is designed and how cloud gaming, once viewed as the console-less future of gaming, is now more untenable than ever. Players who currently use the service are not holding back:

"I don't even know what to say," one user on X posted. "I can't afford to buy a console or a good PC... Xcloud was the only way I had to play since I had access to a huge game catalog paying just 76 bucks... That's it folks, it was good while it lasted..."

The move may be an attempt for Xbox to turn around financially, but it's just another price increase after upping the price of Game Pass earlier this year, and new Call of Duty games will no longer be offered on the service.

Obviously console costs have spiked to an absurd degree around the industry, where now an Xbox Series X with only 1 TB of storage is $800. The console launched at $500 six years ago and Xbox now finds itself in a sales spiral ahead of its important next generation, which is obviously going to be more expensive, barring any major global changes.

Before this Xbox change, cloud gaming was not shaping up to be the future of gaming at all, really. It's wild to see those actually highly engaged with the service being punished with these hard caps. For avid gamers, this works out to 30 minutes a day on the highest tier, unless you pay for overages. Ridiculous.

Xbox doesn't need this right now, and if it does think it needs this, the brand is in worse shape than we thought.

Follow me on Twitter , YouTube , and Instagram .

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy .

This article was originally published on Forbes.com