Now Titanfall has released, the power of the cloud seems to have been something of a damp squib. It seems the cloud, in the short term at least, is about dedicated servers and how they make multiplayer gaming more seamless.
And that - finally - is how Microsoft is now referring to the cloud.
"You picked up on exactly that," Phil Harrison told me at E3 last week.
"Xbox Live is the service. Dedicated servers is the benefit. That is the reason why these games are going to be better, why the experience for multiplayer is going to be better.
"And we're being clear, hopefully around all of the games that will take advantage of it, whether it is a game like Forza Horizon 2, or whether it's Halo: The Master Chief Collection, particularly the Halo 5: Guardians multiplayer beta."
So what does this mean for Xbox One games? Dedicated servers was mentioned in relation to a raft of upcoming Xbox One exclusives, including racing game Forza Horizon 2, from UK studio Playground Games, Insomniac Games' Sunset Overdrive with its eight-player multiplayer, Halo: The Master Chief Collection's nostalgia-fuelled multiplayer, Lionhead's Fable: Legends with its four versus one multiplayer, and Crackdown, from Dave Jones and his mystery team, which features open world co-op.