Cloud streaming is a big part of modern gaming these days, especially when it comes to subscription services and bolstering those offerings. Both Sony and Microsoft integrate some form of the tech into PS Plus and Xbox Game Pass - and outlet Digital Foundry has decided to take a look at how they're both holding up in 2024.
The team has performed a variety of tests across multiple cloud titles, and the results are quite interesting. The quick summary, from their limited testing, is that PS Plus delivers better image quality and performance while xCloud turns in better latency figures.
In terms of how these games were accessed, DF used a PS5 on the Sony side of things, and an Xbox Series X for Microsoft's cloud gaming option. Interestingly, their results found that PS5 streaming matches local PS5 performance (latency aside), while Xbox Series X was actually using Xbox Series S performance targets. Here's a snippet from their breakdown on these findings:
"There's an extra twist to this too. Not only is the video stream lower quality on Xbox's cloud gaming service, but users are being served the Xbox Series S versions of each game I tested - despite confirmation from Microsoft that xCloud datacentres are built on Series X silicon.
Based on our testing, it stands to reason that today's implementation of the Xbox cloud uses a virtualised Series S running on Series X silicon."
This is likely to save on server load for Microsoft, but unfortunately it does mean that games don't perform quite as well as on PS5 via cloud streaming. Games like A Plague Tale: Requiem and Resident Evil 2 ran at around 20FPS lower on the Xbox side of things, which isn't ideal.
Moving over to Back 4 Blood for latency tests though, Xbox comes out the clear winner here with around 40ms less of a delay than PS5. Controller input latency is one of the biggest issues with cloud gaming right now, so it's no small feat that Xbox is managing a much better turnout here.
All in all it's a bit of a mixed bag, and the results may appear to favour PlayStation initially. We think that both platforms have their ups and downs though, and ideally, we'd like to see see both companies improve their cloud gaming services before we'd ever consistently use them.