Remember when you bought a game, and then you could just... play it? Microsoft is testing the boundaries of that quaint notion with its new Cloud Playtime packs, now available to Xbox Insiders. The pitch: pay 24 to 40 cents per hour to stream games you've already purchased. It's like buying a car and then paying a meter to drive it.

Back in September, Microsoft severely limited the game-streaming buffet for Game Pass subscribers and promised non-subscribers would soon be able to "purchase cloud playtime hours through the Xbox Store and stream eligible games they own on supported devices." Today, that promise is a reality, and the reality comes with a price tag. The "introductory launch pricing" tiers are presumably listed somewhere in the article you're not reading because you're too busy doing the math on how many hours of streaming your $70 game purchase entitles you to (spoiler: zero).

The good news, such as it is: purchased playtime "remains available until it's used," so your 50-hour pack won't expire before you get around to that Halo session. The bad news: these Cloud Playtime packs "require cloud playable game purchase or, for select games, free-to-play access," per Microsoft. So you're paying to stream something you already own. It's the arcade model, except you had to buy the cabinet first.

Let's put this in historical context. In 2014, Sony's PlayStation Now offered a la carte streaming for set rental periods, with pricing that rose to $30 for 90 days of real-time streaming access - even for games you could buy on disc for less. That model quickly morphed into an all-you-can-stream subscription, now the $20/month (or $160/year) PlayStation Plus Premium plan. Google's Stadia, meanwhile, offered unlimited streaming for purchased games, then shut down in 2022 and refunded everyone. Microsoft's approach is different: you buy the game, you pay by the hour to stream it, and if you want to avoid ads and wait times, you pay for that too. Ad-supported free streams are available for Insiders to test, but paid users get "shorter wait times [and] high-quality streaming," which is a polite way of saying the free tier is the digital equivalent of coach class.

So how big is the market for this? Last month, Microsoft said only 4 percent of Game Pass subscribers would be affected by the new limits of five to 15 hours of streaming playtime per month. That suggests cloud streaming is a niche interest even when it's bundled free with a subscription. The question now is how many non-subscribers will pay by the hour to stream games they already own. Microsoft is about to find out, one 24-cent hour at a time.