Xbox Cloud Gaming has begun its next stage of evolution today with the addition of its first free-to-play game, Fortnite. Unlike all other games on the service, players do not need an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription to play.
To get started, all you need to do is sign into the Xbox website, navigate to the game's page on the store, and then select "Play with Cloud Gaming" on any number of devices - iOS, iPadOS, Android phones and tablets, or Windows PC.
"It’s an important step to add a Free-to-Play title to the cloud gaming catalog as we continue our cloud journey. We’re starting with Fortnite and will look to bring more Free-to-Play games people love in the future. At Xbox we want to make gaming accessible to the 3 billion players around the world, and cloud has an important role in that mission. Quite simply we want you to have more choice in both the games you play and the way you choose to play them."
Better yet, Fortnite is also enabled with bespoke touch controls, so you don't even need a physical controller!
As mentioned, this is just the first of many free-to-play games that will hopefully be arriving on Xbox Cloud Gaming in the future, and Microsoft has today been hyping up the success of the service so far over at the official Xbox website.
Happy with this? Let us know down in the comments section below.
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[source news.xbox.com]
Comments 13
Well, that’s a 2 finger salute to Apple.
Well played Tim, well played.
Whispers: Hopefully this won't make Apple nerf xcloud!
@themightyant I don't see how they can.they already banned the app unless they block the website which pretty sure Microsoft could sue them for
@Terrin Technically it would be very easy to do, slowing down certain types of traffic even by a few milliseconds would make cloud gaming horrible to play or even unplayable while not really impacting normal web traffic. Not that I think they will do that but it's theoretically possible
@themightyant That would be an interesting pending lawsuit between the world's two richest corporations.
You get the popcorn maker, I'll get the imitation butter product. Phil will just buy the corn fields.
Lol they totally screwing Apple here and I'm for it. If they try and stop it in any way they are in the crosshairs of the government already and they will pounce on them right away. I wonder what cut Xbox is getting as i imagine they still want something from this plus it gets folk's into the Xbox ecosystem with having to setup an account. I'm sure seeing all the titles available to play over xcloud on your phone will be enticing for some. They definitely need a pure xcloud subscription cuz if you don't have a console or PC why would you pay for GPU just for xcloud? It's too expensive for just that.
That worked really well actually! If voice chat works out of the box they have a winner.
I cant stand Tim Sweeney.... "no 30% apple tax"... but you still paying 30% XBox tax!!!
But on the XCloud side of things, this sounds quite interesting. Looking forward to see more games enter streaming. Not only f2p games, but also games that players outright buys.
That's interesting that Xbox cloud gaming doesn't require a subscription for xbox. I bet they're working out how they plan on charging regular users to play the games they bought on xcloud. An xcloud only service would be great. They should just lump that in with Xbox live gold to be honest. Play the games you already bought via xcloud if you have an active gold subscription.
@NotoriousWhiz Xbox Cloud Gaming is an 'Xbox' Platform - Like the Console as games are released on Series consoles, PC and Game Pass. Sometimes you even see which Game Pass platform (PC, Console and/OR Cloud)
The purpose of paying for a Game Pass Subscription is to play the Paid for games in that service on a Platform of your choice - and like Xbox, PS and PC, they have 'free to play' games on their Platform that do NOT require any Subscription.
EVERY paid for game in Cloud Gaming requires a Game Pass Subscription - Fortnite is a F2P game and, like on Xbox, you do NOT need a Subscription to play - not even Gold anymore. Therefore it makes total sense that F2P games in the Cloud won't require a Subscription too.
The point with MS adding 'free to play' to their 'Cloud Platform' is because then you can play a cloud based version (maybe 1080/60 Series X version with much higher quality Visual settings) instead of a version hamstrung by the hardware its on (720/30 with the visual quality settings turned down) like the Mobile Version. Not EVERY F2P game will be playable on a mobile and therefore you are limited but if they are in the Cloud - as this is, you can play ANYWHERE that MS Cloud Gaming can reach.
For MS, the benefits are obvious. They have another person in their ecosystem, another person who may buy things for their F2P game through their store and get that 30% retailer money, that person may then decide to upgrade to Game Pass to play other games like Halo, MSFS, FH5, Starfield etc.
If you want to play the games you already have, there are ways to do it - remote play and/or Game Pass Ultimate which gives you Cloud gaming anywhere - even on an XB1S so you can play MSFS without needing a Series S/X. If you have a console, then you already can play Fortnite without a Subscription!!!
@Krzzystuff Isn't Game Pass for Mobile basically Xbox Cloud Gaming as those games are played by Streaming the game directly to your Mobile. When a Game is announced for Game Pass, it can be for PC, Xbox or Cloud.
Game Pass Ultimate is basically giving you ALL 3 basic Game Pass subscriptions (hence you get Streaming to Console) but if you wanted to, you could just sign up to Game Pass for PC, for Xbox and/or for Mobile/Cloud....
Therefore, if you don't have a PC or Xbox console, you can get Game Pass for Mobile and therefore access to Xbox Cloud Gaming....
@Krzzystuff I’m guessing Microsoft’s cut is great publicity for Xbox and Cloud Streaming. Not often you can utilise one of the biggest games in the world as a pillar of your service to entice people into trying a new service. Especially one people are sceptical of like cloud streaming. I imagine (if xcloud works well for players) it will pay them back handsomely with engagement and future cloud use/ game pass sales.
There could be a cut or one off payment too but I suspect it’s just a great bit of PR.
Really glad to see this. Fortnite lost millions of players when it was taken off the iOS store. Some moved to other platforms, but many stopped playing entirely. So there's a BIG market for mobile Fortnite.
It'd be great to see this brought to more F2P games as a good alternative to having to develop a fully fledged mobile port, but the issue is that games still need to be altered for mobile with a new UI, controls etc.
I played a little bit of this last night to see how it plays, and it was good. Unfortunately my old phone can barely run XCloud, but I got far better performance than I've had on other games, and the mobile UI made it easy to play with touch controls, and the graphics look far better than the mobile version.
I probably wouldn't play any serious matches with it, but it'd be good to check out my current quests and the store at least. If I had a modern tablet and controller this'd be a great way to play.
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