Xbox President Says xCloud Is Enjoying 'Tremendous Growth' Right Now

Tried it once on my phone, in my house, on WiFi, sat next to the router. It was a terrible experience. It could be a phenomenal game changer in theory but it needs to start working consistently for everyone with minimal end user tinkering if they want to hit the masses. The purely anecdotal feedback I see on Reddit/websites is about 50/50. For some people it is downright unplayable and for some people it works well, although I still often see the caveat that they wouldn’t play an online multiplayer game on it.

I imagine Sarah Bond’s metrics for growth here are the typical Xbox reporting metrics: they have seen massive amount of growth in the people who have given it a go once but probably not in the people who consistently use it on a day to day basis. If they came out and said “X million number of people spent 2 hours or more on xCloud in April” I would be impressed however I imagine the figure they are actually pulling from here are the X number of people who tried it for five minutes and gave up….alternatively it’s just an outright lie which I wouldn’t be surprised about either!

Thats been my angle for a while now. When not if but when cloud is 90% as good as a console to the causal gamer the console market is dead. They won’t see the value in buying a $500 box to play Madden, FIFA and Fortnite. They will play on their TV or cloud device. That leaves PC for the gamers like us. So MS is not trying to fight the console space with Sony no more as it looks to the next thing. Cloud won’t over night be as good as a PS6 but once it is the casuals will go to it over night and the console market will be sitting there in a cloud of dust. Eh… get it…. Cloud of dust.
Come on people laugh a little…. It’s been a hard week. 😊

Soon with the way things are going they won't have a business, certainly not Xbox. I thought that they gave the cloud up to Ubisoft for them run and get the deal through.

Many people like me have had enough and will be abandoning for good. As soon as I've saved up it's goodbye and good riddance.

How about letting us stream game pass pc games to our consoles?

I use it to play football manager on my phone works great for that.

Used it for games like Yakuza 7 and it worked great even on my phone. It's great stuff.

It still sucks. I live like 10 miles away from the closest Microsoft Data Center (with xCloud servers apparently), got a 5ghz mesh Wi-Fi 6 router, got a Wi-Fi 6 compatible phone and the experience still sucks.

There’s noticeable lag, becomes very blurry and overall it ain’t a good experience in all the games I tried, it’s usable but I wouldn’t play anything more than 5 minutes.

@Kooky_Geezer I’m also on that boat, I’m already looking into how to begin the transition to PC, the main obstacle right now is my digital library, I’ve got around 60 games that I only own on Xbox so that’d mean having to rebuy them eventually.

@IOI I've got over 1k digital games on Xbox so will just keep the series X so I can access my library.

The option is to save up for a decent PC or hope the next Steam Deck has better specs docked. It's a shame that the Steam Machine failed.

I hate to say it, but I've really enjoyed playing xbox games via cloud. I largely play the smaller games on it that aren't fast paced, which has worked very well over my router and 5G networks where I live.

@GeeEssEff Works well for me, these days. Sometimes the picture quality can vary. We're on WiFi, after all. If your WiFi is poor, that is not going to help. I've played a few games start to finish. Usually, I use it when I don't want to install a game, or to play GP on Steam Deck.

@Kooky_Geezer I’m kinda looking at a 4070 setup, but I might just wait for the 5070 coming out later this year, in the meantime next week I’m getting a Rog Ally or Legion Go to basically begin testing how gaming on a PC would be (I’ve always owned all consoles but no PC).

@HonestHick
Would love to have a go at home but my crazy on available 6mb/sec won’t do it 😂
I did try at a friends just once with 150mb/sec and just sat in queues for over 5 minutes on three different games.
Gave up of course, so guess Xbox need far more severs?

It’s so interesting how everyone’s experience differs.

I have a WiFi 5 router, 200mpbs down/20 up speed — so nothing crazy. But when I still had Gamepass it cloud gaming was so flawless that I forgot the game wasn’t running off my SSD. Same with PS+ to be honest. And that’s on both console and phone.

But clearly there’s a wide range of experiences, and that’s going to hold back any major growth.

@IOI The main worry about switching to PC is I know that they are fiddly to run with many different parts. I'm old and have no experience at all guess will have to learn everything.

I'm sure you will get the hang of it eventually and a platform that isn't in threat. Good luck:)

@theduckofdeath My WiFi is not the best by any stretch. It’s like middle of the road fibre optic but I can play online games on both Xbox and PS5 via wireless connection no problems whatsoever. Which is kind of what I’m getting at, for any cloud gaming service to be usable for me it needs to be as good as the console experience or at least 90% there. If I am at home I will play on console so the chances are I am only going to want to play cloud games while I am away from home like in a hotel or on a train etc and the chances are the connection in these places is going to be even worse then my WiFi connection at home.

Out of interest how easy is it to stream GP games on Steamdeck. I have chiaki4deck and Xbplay for remote play and both work way better than my phone did so I would be interested to try streaming via Xcloud on the deck and see if I get better results from that. Maybe it is my phone, that’s the issue.

@HonestHick It will be great when it's all cloud based Xbox PlayStation Nintendo all just apps no overpriced consoles or constant comparing which console renders someone's elbows with the best resolution and fastest fps good times ahead

after all this messy xbox gen i'll do everything i can to not give ms any business.

@OldGamer999 yeah they do need more infrastructure to it and are building it up over time. I have 1000mbps and sometimes it’s still not perfect. However i can download a 75GB game in 8-11 mins. So i stick to that. 😊

@Ricky-Spanish i agree and it may get there in time. I think thats the next step. Of course PC gaming will be there for the more hardcore groups like you and i and others if we wish to. Consoles have a little life left in them some. But it’s not going to grow over the next 10 years like Sony and MS wish or need it to.

@Ricky-Spanish
No I want consoles until I die.
I want 4K 60fps and Dolby Atmos, top graphics etc, not some watered down ***** streaming.

@HonestHick
Consoles have their followers and their market saturation and always have done.
Some of this is corporate greed wanting more, forcing rubbish streaming at us way before it’s ready and internet infrastructure is ready.
Long live consoles forever 😂

ms can have the few million that want to stream games. sony will go with the billions. bye xbox.

Until ALL data caps are removed and no internet providers EVER have them again, cloud gaming will suffer.

Disclaimer, I'm very, very, very, very, much against cloud gaming, period. Give me a console and a disc any day of the week. I much prefer a quality experience than randomness and terrible issues of cloud gaming.

@OldGamer999 Eventually it will be that good just not right now but it is how it will eventually go

@HonestHick I seriously doubt a casual will spend $200 a year to subscribe to a service to game. Casuals don't even spend $1 on mobile games.
I also double-doubt any casuals will pay $70 or more for a game to stream. Kinda insane if you ask me.

Microsoft NEVER gives any actual info on anything. Growth this and growth that. But with something as seldom used as cloud gaming, any amount would pretty much mean growth...lol

@TheGameThrifter all they have to do is get the $199 Series S and a GP core subscription which is cheaper than a PS5 and PSN, however whether they will just opt for the PS5 and spend the extra money is the question. But if COD is only on Series and PS5 this time. People will upgrade cause up to this point there has been very few big games to leave people’s Xbox one and PS4 for. COD and GTA6 will get players to upgrade.

Have pretty much Nasa level internet and found it terribly laggy with artifacts up the yahoo, also tried playing PS3 games from my PS5 with their service and is equally horrible. If gaming turns into just streaming I'm going to have to find a new hobby maybe collecting coins or something.

@GeeEssEff It is pretty easy to setup XCloud/XPlay on Steam Deck. I've done it twice manually; there are probably scripts to do it for you. There are plenty good guides. Pretty much you install Microsoft Edge as a Steam app, then configure it to launch straight to the XPlay page, at the Steam Deck resolution. It works really well and looks good.

The thing to consider is that if you set the Deck down or let it go to sleep, you might disconnect. Or XPlay may boot you for being idle. Best to just sign out explicitly then and sign back in.

Compared to PS remote play and streaming, Xcloud is so poor. It’s like playing AAA games on a Switch