Xbox wants to revolutionize xCloud with a free plan: play without Game Pass in exchange for watching ads

The Xbox division, under the leadership of Asha Sharma, continues to redefine its strategy. After betting on bringing its games to more platforms and strengthening the Xbox Play Anywhere ecosystem, the company has announced a new free plan for Xbox Cloud Gaming, also known as xCloud, its cloud gaming platform. From now on it will be possible to play without a Game Pass subscription. The trick? Users must watch advertisements before each game session.

Sharma's arrival at the head of Xbox marked the beginning of a different stage for the Microsoft brand. After several years of multi-billion dollar acquisitions, major waves of layoffs and increasing pressure to improve business profitability, the company appears determined to explore new avenues for growth.

The strategy is no longer just about selling consoles or Game Pass subscriptions, but rather about expanding the reach of the Xbox ecosystem and attracting new users with much more flexible access models.

Microsoft has begun testing the new free Xbox Cloud Gaming tier among members of the Xbox Insiders program. The plan allows you to stream certain games that the user already owns in the cloud, without paying for an Xbox Game Pass subscription.

The trade-offs are two: the mandatory viewing of advertisements before starting each game session and a maximum duration of one hour per session. With this formula the company finances the model, although it promises that the advertising will be relevant and personalized for each user.

The initiative represents an important change of approach. If it becomes widely implemented, in addition to diversifying its revenue sources through advertising, Microsoft reduces one of the main barriers to entry to cloud gaming and brings xCloud to a much broader audience.

The fact that ads appear only before you start playing—and not during games—makes, at least on paper, the experience much less intrusive than other free, ad-supported services.

For now, the free level is in the testing phase and is only available to a small group of Xbox Insiders, so we will have to wait to find out its final conditions and its possible large-scale deployment.

Even so, the message is clear: if until now Game Pass was the main paywall for cloud gaming, the future of Xbox could be a freemium model in which you are allowed to play for free in exchange for a few seconds of ads.