Talking Point: Do You Make Use Of Cloud Gaming On Xbox Game Pass?

Works fine whenever I have used it on my Series X. My PS5, not so good.

I would love to use it but with my internet connection is not doable

Used it to get a few easy achievements. Which it is handy for, or trying a game you are unsure on.

But it was pretty terrible. Except when playing slow paced games.

5/10

Since upgrading my WiFi it is much better. Cloud gaming on the Steam deck works quite well. Not perfect, but not bad at all. Suits some games better than others.

Only ever touched it for Game Pass Quests, and even then every 2 out of 3 games were just faster to download than to wait for the cloud.

I'm not "out and gaming" that much, if I'm out odds are I don't have time to game, if I have time to game I'm more likely to take my Kindle or drawing book.

That being said I do use "with some frequency" at home. Playing games in bed, when the kids are using the Xbox or screens, that sort of thing. It works really well with my 1GB internet.

The primary "limit" for me using cloud is hardware, ironically. If I use my phone/tablet I need the controller, the android console I have has a small screen that makes anything involving text awkward, the Quest 3 works really well also needs the controller. The bedroom TV doesn't have the GP app and that would mean taking it away from the wife.

The tech is NOT EVEN close. Cloud gaming experience is even worse than Series S experience.

That's saying something.

I haven't bought a Series console yet, as Switch is my main console. When Halo or Fable release without Xone compatibility, sure I'll look for a sale.

Because of this, when I have game pass (which I do intermittently) I have played a number of games via streaming. I enjoyed it for sure, and can see the value of it for on-the-go gaming away from your main console. If I had the latest and greatest console, I don't see use for it when gaming at home.

It annoys me that as a Game Pass Ultimate subscriber I can't play a downloaded Game Pass game on my Series S and stream the same game with xCloud on a different device at the same time — I'm paying the higher price for GPU for additional services, aren't I?

@101Force because xcloud is a console version of the game so your logged in twice when doing that , if you play a pc version and the cloud version you can ( eg TMNT :shredders revenge )

I’ve used it to play small indie games which don’t have multiplayer if I’m on the fence about installing them. I’ve not used it recently though.

Used it quite a few times, even on games like Far Cry 6. Worked great.

its awful. nothing more to say.

I used it once with Dead Cells on Game Pass (Series S). It worked better than expected, but it didn't look as good as it did when I actually downloaded the game.

I don’t know if it’s my location or what, but Series X and PS5 both run fantastically on the cloud — I sometimes forget I’m even streaming the game. A great way to test games out before downloading.

And even better, Xcloud on my phone is a great way to play in bed.

@Martsmall : All three — console, PC, and xCloud — should be seperate services in my opinion, but thank you for the workaround.

I use it sometimes when I am not home on my phone. It is good enough for story driven games that do not require low latency controls.

My cloud streaming experience has been pretty good! Granted, I've only been using it for more simplistic games like A Little to the Left and Vampire Survivors, so I don't know how a more complicated game would hold up.

I use it a decent bit and I am satisfied with it.

I refuse to forfeit my storage space to my niece and nephew so they can play 5 minutes of each of the 10 games they like. Cloud gaming works perfect for them.

If I try to use it in normal hours in the UK the waiting times are often 15 minutes or more. After midnight I can normally start something up instantly and maybe have a look at something on game pass if I am unsure of the quality etc but other than that I barely touch it. If the game is worth playing then I might download it after looking at it but using it for any major length of time is just a no for me.

I only use it for local network streaming. So I can sit in my office up stairs and stream from my Series X.

I've only used the console remote play side of things and that's it.

Tried it on my iPhone once. Sat in a queue for five minutes before getting into Forza which was horribly pixelated, had huge input delays and felt about 10fps. 1/10 for me. Might have got 2/10 if I didn’t have to queue for it.

If your internet is less than 50mbps, forget about using xcloud or any cloud service

Absolutely! It's worked great for years now. Have had very few issues with it especially recently, very pleased with it

I usually prefer streaming from my console rather than the cloud. Just seems more consistent.

Enter "I mean it's alright" meme...

I use it off and on, more so since I got a steam deck. It has improved since it's inception. Streaming seems smoother more often on various connections.

There was a period last year where there was a wait time to get online that would sometimes peak near 10-15 mins. Honestly, I wouldn't wait. Maybe I'm spoiled but I found it insulting considering how much they hype the service.. Lately, I haven't seen much delay in getting online at various times so maybe it was a temporary issue.

I can usually stream No Man's Sky with very little lag on a moderate connection. On a good connection it's barely noticable. For fast paced quick moving FPs it's probably not a good choice, for everything else it's good.

I use it fairly often on my Steam Deck. So far I’ve played As Dusk Falls, Far Cry 6, Forza 8 and now I’m playing Dead Island 2. There are occasional slowdowns or lag, but the experience is still great for what it is.

I use it a lot seasonally, but I would use it a whole lot more if it had quick resume. I mostly use it on my G Cloud and retroid but without quick resume it's not as useful for pick up and play as just using my S as a streaming server. Only problem with that is the S frequently goes into a state where it won't power on remotely.

Also it was hard to get instantly connected last time I was using it. Wait times kill it for Switch like use.

Surprised it's using the S version though. 2 years ago when I used it more heavily before setting up the S for streaming it was using the X version, so it's downgraded.

With QR I'd use it tons more though.

Only time I use ‘xcloud’ is to get some fast enough achievements for rewards points. Never for any games which I have true interest.

For whatever worth, my home internet speed is 80 megabits down and with usually 60ms latency.

For me it’s no. I should forget permanently that I’m streaming, not at times if I’m lucky.

I have no scientific proof, but my guess from my own technical expertise is that I'm betting MS has limits on how many connections of each type of device that's connecting. In low traffic times, my Xbox or PC usually will have to wait up to 5 minutes for a game to launch. However, if I connect from my iPad or Meta Quest 2 (Which I love playing Game Pass thru) I rarely have to wait for the game to launch. And even on wifi, I love playing Forza Horizons on my Quest 2 headset. I wouldn't trust the latency for a race against other live players, but for Solo races it works great and looks awesome!

The tech is an embarrassment. Perhaps if you play card games and don't mind horrific artifacting it might be passable.

I have 500mb fibre broadband wired to my Xbox and it's still quite bad tech ain't there yet unfortunately

The queuing is terrible. 10+ minutes most the time unless I try early morning or after midnight. The performance once in is not bad. Even Forza horizon 5 was playable (graphics downgraded a bit)

I am playing on Wi-FI6 and the image is disturbed by the screen transitions with heavy movement. Also, when playing FPS, I sometimes feel a large input delay.
I appreciate that this technology is still in its infancy.

I 100% agree with digital foundry. Streaming on PlayStation is way ahead of X Box who reduce all their streamed games to Series S settings so the Series X can only stream games at 1080p/30fps while PS5 can steam 4K/60fps ! There is no excuse for Series X owners being forced to play inferior versions of their games that look horrible on a big TV especially when compared to 4k/60 being offered to PlayStation 5 owners !

Sony have been offering streaming for far longer than X Box have I get it but seriously anyone who has tried both knows the difference in quality is night and day both streamed through the console and through PlayStation remote play and to add insult to injury PlayStation also has a far larger library of streamable games too so I rarely use X Box to stream if I have the choice as it's really not good !

In general, I use it without any problems. No console or PC at home. I connected the 8bitdo controller to the Samsung TV. It doesn't matter to me if the images are distorted.

It's the only way I can play Dead Island 2 on GP, since I don't have new consoles. My PC can certainly play the game at max, but I don't really wanna buy it tbh.

@Jett No, there are no forced 30fps locks on Xcloud streaming.