Today, Boosteroid and Microsoft announced the first four games to be added to the cloud streaming platform's library as part of the ten-year agreement signed by the two parties a couple of months ago.
Unsurprisingly, the four games are the very same announced as part of the similar deal Microsoft signed with NVIDIA's GeForce NOW: The Coalition's Gears 5, Arkane Lyon's Deathloop, and Obsidian's Grounded and Pentiment. Whereas GeForce NOW users can already stream Gears 5 and will be able to do the same with the other three games from next Thursday, Boosteroid users can look forward to all four titles joining the library on June 1st.
Microsoft stressed how this is just the beginning of a rollout that will include the rest of the Microsoft and Bethesda libraries. Additionally, should the acquisition of Activision Blizzard be approved, those games would also become available on Boosteroid and other platforms.
That is, after all, why Microsoft entered into these agreements in the first place. The goal was to reassure regulators on their competition concerns for the burgeoning cloud gaming market. While it worked with the European Union (which approved the deal last week, though it also required Microsoft to agree to a global and free 10-year license for both cloud gaming providers and users), it didn't with the UK regulator. The Competition and Markets Authority said it couldn't be sure of the positive impact of these deals, and it also expressed skepticism about the terms of the contracts due to specific clauses.
Still, cloud providers are mostly united in supporting Microsoft's bid. I recently interviewed Boosteroid Head of Strategic Communications Antonina Batova, who explained:
The CMA's ruling is likely to do the contrary to what they are claiming - slowing the innovation and development of cloud gaming by cutting out the Activision's audience from cloud gaming services. The situation where this content is widely available in the cloud has clear benefits to the market, the competition and most importantly, to the end customers who would then be able to play high-end Activision games on almost any device regardless of its processing power or OS.
This will definitely be in the interests of cloud gaming providers. The market and, obviously, the end users benefit greatly from major franchises by Xbox Game Studios and Activision games being widely available in the cloud.
That's why major cloud gaming providers, including Boosteroid, want the deal to go through.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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