Microsoft shows off how it believes the cloud will change gaming forever

Microsoft hasn't held back from talking about how offloading computational efforts to the cloud will advance gaming, but now they are finally showing us what that looks like. In short, this system allows developers to offload processing to remote servers, which in theory frees up local hardware to improve things like rendering.

This week during Microsoft's developer-centric Build conference in San Francisco, the company showed off a custom tech demo illustrating the system running on PC hardware. Importantly, what we're seeing here in the video above is not Xbox One footage and the demo is merely a prototype.

Still, as we see in the video, the PC that's not connected to Microsoft's Azure server network seriously struggles when the building begins to collapse. Meanwhile, the connected rig is able to achieve a far more steady frame-rate throughout.

Microsoft says that tapping into the power of the cloud for gaming will allow for "news kinds of experiences that have never been possible."

We're already seeing some of this come to life, as Respawn Entertainment's Xbox One game Titanfall offloads some computational efforts to the cloud. Microsoft released a new video (below) highlighting how the cloud improves the Titanfall experience, though much of what is said is already known.

The video from Microsoft's Build conference was captured by YouTube user Arekkz Gaming. You can watch the entire presentation at Microsoft's website.