Multiple Xbox Cloud Gaming Improvements Reportedly On The Way

Improved bitrate is the biggest plus here. It's fine on mobile but cloud gaming on a PC has been a chore for me (UK). Could be a game changer

I'll preface this by saying that it could simply be because of my location but Xcloud has basically been useless for me whenever I've tried it. Either by having very poor image quality or when trying to play Halo, I had unplayable levels of input lag.

I did try the now dead Google Stadia and that was a significantly better experience in both regards.

I'm not really the target audience for such a service as I'm unwilling to sacrifice the benefits of having the game installed on the device I'm using but it really has to be a much better experience and actually work, no matter where you are

@carlos82 yeah when I search in forums for ways to improve the experience it's almost unanimously better in the US (could be more data centres?), and lots of people say stadia and geforce now are leagues ahead of xCloud

They could expand their available countries. I pay for GPU, but can't use Cloud. -_-

@themightyant
Some wise words please.
Is it just me or the UK my internet 200mb/sec.
I tried series x game cloud streaming.
The visual picture was terrible like a bit of a blurred mess.
Or is the current standard.
TV 65” 4K etc etc.

@OldGamer999 200mb should be fast enough. Although faster would yield better results. Cloud streams at 1080p so should look just as good as streaming Netflix or likewise as 1080p. How are you streaming? From the Xbox itself? How is it connected to the internet?

Cloud works floorlessly for me here in New Zealand. Even over mobile data.

*Repost from early discussion

I read comments all the time about people not having joy in cloud gaming or remote play due to lag/input lag etc.

Most problems are easily fixed. You just need to know where to look.

I have a basic list of improvements.

1. Use 5ghz wifi. Turn off 2.4ghz or at least run separate signals and ignore the 2.4ghz signal on your device. Devices can divert back to 2.4ghz because of the stronger signal killing your ping.

2. Wired if possible. Use wired connections. Definitely on your Xbox if you want to use remote play. But even playing on the cloud. If you can wire it. Do it.

3. Use wifi 6. Use wireless networks that are capable of wifi 6. Wifi 6 has much less latency than wifi 5. So get a new router/enable wifi 6 if you have it. Also on your device settings enable signal type/strength. Then a little 6 or 5 will show up next to your wifi signal. If you can always choose 6.

4. Upnp/or port forward. Enable upnp on your router or port forward your Xbox live port. Doesn't hurt to do both.

5. Use default xbox live port. Use 3074 on the Xbox you wish to remote play from. If you have two xboxes one will need a different port. But the one you want to remote to most, put on 3074. Some business wifi/public Hotspots block all ports over 50000 which most of the fallback Xbox live ports are.

6. Enable QoS. Use QoS on your router and if you can, prioritise gaming. Also enable QoS under network settings on your Xbox.

7. Mimo. Get a smart router with mimo or equivalent. Maybe something with an app that you can prioritize clients. Then prioritize your Xbox and any devices connecting to it.

8. Get closer to the router. If using wifi try and get closer to the router. Or if not an option use another wired device as a wireless Hotspot. My work computer works great for this.

9. Check to wifi chip in your device. Older devices have slower wifi chips. An s24 is going to have less latency than a s22. Not to mention way faster than an a03.

10. Upgrade your controller. Using an old Bluetooth controller may well be slowing you down. Bluetooth 4.0 is light-years faster than Bluetooth 2.0. So your device or the controller may be running on an older Bluetooth standard.

11. Wired again. Get something like a razor kishi/backbone. Plugs directly into the USB c port on your phone. Destroying input lag.

12. Fibre. Get a Fibre internet connection. If not available, get the best wired internet connection you can get. Forget adsl, vdsl, satellite or even 3g/4g mobile data broadband packages. They are all going to suck.

13. Use gaming mode. A lot of phones or tablets have a dedicated gaming mode. These quite often limit background applications sucking up bandwidth or processor power. Some even enable a performance mode making the device run faster.

Well that pretty much the basics. If you do some or all that, you will have no problems.

@carlos82 I am in the states with 400MBps and Xcloud is also useless for me. Latency is terrible and honestly 1080p on my 65” LG looks real bad.

@Astig I've tried pretty much everything, by default I split my 5ghz and 2.4ghz signals and Xcloud has been poor whether I'm trying it on console, PC, wired/wireless or on mobile and as I said, Stadia worked great on the exact same setup.

So in my case I'm fairly certain that my location is the biggest issue

To add to this, I'd suggest that if such a service requires this level of troubleshooting, then its not fit for purpose. As your average person is simply not going to do this, they'll just try it once and see it doesn't work and move on

@carlos82 try talking to your provider. There may be a problem outside your home that needs fixing, and they can usually detect this by running a test.

@themightyant
Streaming from the series x wired to the router.
No wifi.
It’s probably something my end.
Just wanted to know if that was the quality.
But it sounds like I should be getting better quality.
I seem to stream 4K movies etc really well through my sky q box and that’s Wi-Fi.

About time with the visuals. Even 1080p via third party apps is terrible on a bigger screen now.

Perfect for handhelds but the visual quality needs to be improved massively if this is the route Xbox are focused on in the long term.

@DonkeyFantasy there's absolutely nothing wrong with my Internet, this is an Xcloud issue

I had family over last night and we watched my nephew stream multiple games. No one could tell it was not running natively. It worked perfectly. It was thru a fire stick on a 65" TV. No hiccups, pixelation, or frame dips. I am impressed with how well cloud has improved since I first tried it.

The xCloud improvements next month are indeed exciting! I'm eager to try the ability to stream games we own, as well as the new direct to cloud controllers.

I'm also curious about the changes on the mobile front, now that Google has been forced to open up their store payment options.. that is the breech Microsoft has ben waiting for.

Xcloud is currently limited to 12mbps per second and codec h264. It was my understanding that this was actually a limitation in the hardware chips on the server blades. So if they've found a way around that to boost it then that's fantastic news.