As the project inches ever closer to its full release, Xbox Cloud Gaming continues to grow in scale and ambition, with Microsoft even recently announcing that Xbox One players will be able to use the streaming technology to play Xbox Series X games. With it growing into a staple of the publisher's future plans, it seems the company is looking to recruit additional talent to work on the project, with its most recent hire bringing a huge name into the fold.
That name is none other than Kim Swift, the project lead on Valve's seminal puzzler Portal and former director of design over at Google Stadia. Swift has over a decade of experience in the games industry and will now be bringing her expertise to the Cloud Gaming team, with Xbox announcing her involvement via a tweet on its Xbox Games Studio Publishing account.
According to Microsoft, she'll be collaborating with independent game studios to help build their games for the Cloud, with the company claiming she's been recruited to "accelerate [its] innovation." Swift will definitely bring a lot of experience to the project, having worked in several major positions across the industry. Not only did she bring Portal to screens, but she also worked on both Left 4 Dead games as a designer, was a senior design manager for Amazon, and worked as a studio design director over at EA Motive back in 2017.
She'll be working on another ambitious project, with Xbox Cloud Gaming looking to offer players the ability to stream some of Microsoft's biggest titles on a range of devices. It's currently available in beta, although there's already a sizeable selection of games to dive into. Microsoft has been gradually expanding the lineup and adding the ability to use touch controls, meaning players don't even need a controller to jump into the likes of Gears 5, Sea of Thieves, Minecraft Dungeons, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, and Slay the Spire on a mobile device.
It seems Cloud Gaming might extend even further than mobile devices in the future, with Xbox Head Phil Spencer confirming that the company is in talks to bring Xbox Game Pass to certain TVs and streaming sticks. It would mean players could access Xbox games without the need for a console, bringing the publisher's range of notable upcoming exclusives to a much wider audience. It'll be interesting to see where Xbox Cloud Gaming heads going forward, especially with Microsoft seemingly using it to move away from the need for traditional games consoles.