Flight Sim requires online for the full game. Quite a difference....
They also use cloud delivery and off-the-box AI technology in other aspects of this game too. Little things you wouldn't think about.
The ATC voices, for example, are synthesized through Azure AI (though I'm not sure how many of these voices come baked into the game versus included in the cloud stream?) so that there are unique voices for the many different airports you interact with around the world.
There's a variety of other examples (their weather integration, the proper vegetation per biome, the united world for multiplayer, the potential for live updates of areas, etc) in their tech stack overview. From what I understand of it, there's a mix of pre-'baked' ML work versus the live cloud-integrated services in this breakdown (MSFS is almost 100GBs to install, there's plenty of data also included on your PC/console... your game isn't going to just disappear and show a paper airplane over a Mode7 ground texture if you lose your connection to the cloud,) but the many feeds brought into the whole network combine with the rich, varied assets they have in onrder to enable this persistence & level of detail.
...Finding ways to use this much cloud power inside of a game that's viable and enjoyable to the player beyond just "simulate a whole planet", that's still been a question Microsoft has struggled to define in the years since its "Power of the Cloud" declaration. But then, that's why they're building a division and hiring Kim Swift.
(*I've not heard "cloud" mentioned at all regarding Starfield or Elder Scrolls VI aside from Xbox One players getting a streaming version since it's next-gen-only, but there could be uses in those kinds of projects down the line too.)
You'll own nothing and like it. Now plug in, citizen!
Eh, the people demanding to own on a disc/download for their movie, TV, and music entertainment are a very small minority.
As far as streaming-video of games (which
isn't what this is,) that's one way to look at it, we will see if the attitude changes over time in the gaming business. Right now, gamers are protective of their practices and of the quality of experience in precision and modification (but also, the game providers have been still needing per-product game sales and have been overpricing the streamed content.) If the publishers price it right, if the technology gets better, the kids coming up after us are not as picky or are interested in speed of access and other features over on-box quality, if things evolve in streaming in vital ways to get it over to the public, it could become the more popular approach to game delivery.
But again, this isn't what cloud-native games are.