Cloud gaming may have taken a blow in the eyes of the mainstream public with Google’s decision to wind down its first-party studios a mere couple of years after opening them, but regardless of this specific and very Google-style instance, cloud gaming is still very much on the rise.

The latter cloud gaming service is built on Microsoft’s Azure servers and PlayFab technology, which the Xbox and Windows giant acquired about three years ago alongside the company. Former PlayFab CEO and CoFounder James Gwertzman, now Microsoft’s General Manager for Gaming Cloud, was recently interviewed by Game Rant; during the chat, he talked about the new opportunities allowed by cloud gaming technology to create previously impossible experiences.

This is something we’ve heard before from Google as well as game developers such as Larian. Of course, some might snicker at the idea resurfacing from Microsoft again due to the failure of Crackdown 3’s cloud-based multiplayer, though just because one game failed doesn’t mean the technology as a whole doesn’t have potential.

This act of content creation, once you have it in the cloud, distribution becomes more fluid. We see this with xCloud. It started out as just racking Xboxes in datacenters and streaming it. Now we’re getting more experience with it, and you may be able to build game experiences that would not be possible without running in the cloud. Games were you can have lots of players in a single environment interacting in new ways.

xCloud was about putting Xboxes in the cloud laugh but the broader term is pixel streaming, where you’re running GPUs in the cloud and streaming it down. Initially pixel streaming is going to be useful in non-gaming scenarios like architecture or retail where you want a 3D experience but you don’t have to have the hardware. That will then move into gaming and you’ll see developers leveraging experiences that go beyond what was possible before.

Besides, that’s merely one of the possible applications. Later in the interview, Gwertzman also talked about a voice-font tool that could make it much cheaper (and easier) for smaller developers to add proper voice acting to their game projects.

Are you excited about the potential of cloud gaming, especially once 5G coverage will be more widespread? Let us know in the comments.