Xbox Introduces 'Stream Your Own Game' Feature With 50 Titles Supported At Launch

What a weird selection of titles.

Kinda surprised to see WWE on there with all the custom content and all. Guess they store that in the cloud data now.

Awesome news!

Wonder if controller is required or controller overlay is on the touchscreen device? Not think saw that mentioned in article.

So my options are either sit in the comfort of my plush armchair in front of a 77” 4K@120hz OLED with my controller in hand playing everything natively with zero lag, or…stream only that which I already own to a device like a phone with a tiny screen so I can muddle through it at 1080p with horrendous lag while I use the porcelain Xbox.

Amazing news! Most of the games I own on Xbox aren’t on the list but it’s a great start. Waiting for full Amazon Fire Tv stick integration.

This is huge ! Now what we're waiting for is the end of the beta phase of xCloud with a real leap in terms of quality AND other games added to the list !

So in a 'play anywhere' logic, we have the choice to play it in the cloud on these different devices : Xbox console, PC, TV, etc., but also to be able to install it on a console or PC for practical reasons or because there is no internet in some areas or the connection is poor. It's a game changer ! A significant added value to the Xbox ecosystem !

And this is how they will monetize your digital library. It'll be held hostage behind a monthly fee once they stop selling hardware, which is "no longer profitable" as they sell their games to other platforms.

If the plan wasn't so blatant I wouldn't be so bothered.

(This working is cool, but I immediately thought to where this will lead 10 years from now.)

The wording of the announcement makes it seem like they have to get permission from 3rd parties (like they did with the Xbox/Xbox 360 backwards compatibility program) to allow games to be streamable.

A step in the right direction. Hopefully that list grows quickly. Also hoping for a future option for native access to digital xbox purchases on pc app.

I have been loving cloud streaming recently so more than just the gamepass collection is very welcome.

Bit of an odd list to start with. I wonder how often we will see more games added. Is this Xbox finally going full Stadia?

You can access the games straight from the app now as well. It didn’t seem to appear at first but it’s there on a banner. @FraserG

Nice!
50 games is not much, but it's a good start.

Am I the only one perplexed by the almost complete lack of first-party games in that list?

@Grumblevolcano They definitely need to get permission from 3rd parties. As 3rd parties need to verify with any company who they may be licensing content from (music, cars… etc) if it okay to have it stream able.

Definitely like the sounds of this but only as long as you have decent internet connection to be able to do it. I’d not want to have connection problems if playing MW2 online multiplayer.

@Elbow u good?

@FraserG Thank you for the follow up. If was in article that's my fault, I kinda skimmed thru it.

Microsoft preaches the cloud stuff so much it is monotonous at this point. Articles, everywhere, all the time, every day. I'm just so very burned out on the topic honestly.

@Elbow Agree with you 1,000,000%.

If the pitfalls and cautionary tales of all digital has not raised red flags to people. I highly doubt your honest, truthful, and accurate, warning will either. The sheep will continue to "baah" and forever be led.

@Balaam_ Exactly what I've said for years now. Lmao. I'll never understand why people want torture themselves like this. Almost like I envision them wearing a black leather facemask with zippers for openings.

@Markatron84 I'd assume because you need gamepass ultimate for this, and most first party games are already on gamepass, so are covered...

I don't use gamepass, so I'm not paying to rent a stream of the games I already own!

@Elbow This is terrible!!!
These are the games we BOUGHT. If they're going to push that anything and everything is an Xbox than we shouldn't have to pay twice for our games.

This isn't for the gamers, this is so that MS can keep renting games forever and ever. Words can't express how disappointed I am with Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond.

That reminds me, I really need to test out the Xbox streaming app on my TV. I don't own many of these particular games but will give Cyberpunk a go

@Markatron84 all their first party games are on Gamepass and as you need that to stream these, it'd be rather pointless

Now that's a nice addition...and no need to keep your console turned on unnecessarily.
😉

@NEStalgia This is what you have been waiting for. More games should be added regularly. 😁

@Dimey @carlos82 true, duh, I didn't think of that 🤣 I wonder if people who own, say, Forza Horizon 4 will be able to still stream that once it gets delisted? Because presumably it's leaving Game Pass as well.

What if you own them on disc?

@Banjo- I was waiting for it for it for years....so many years I've now switched to PC and changed from GPU to GPPC and can't use it anymore!

It's cool that they're finally adding it though. Someday I may have a use for it, though I think - might actually recommend it to people. In my case since I've now amassed a large PC library, if I wanted to stream it, even though I still have a big Xbox library forever, I think I'd probably do better with Geforce Now for steraming if it's supported. But, there could be titles supported on one and not the other, so it could still come in handy at some point.

THIS is the future of Xbox, and their new service has already failed dramatically. Flight Sim launched yesterday and is an online streaming games and practically every player has slated it, because they cannot play the game even the ones who paid 200 dollars for the top end version!!
It's truly pathetic MS with its network cannot make game streaming work, and yet they are talking about using it for processing power of its next console... so now you won't even download the game.

To the whiners complaining about the monthly fee for using this cloud gaming service : do you think servers and bandwidth are free? 😏 GeForce Now, Boosteroid, Luna and so on are free too, sure.
No the real limitation for now like the others cloud gaming services is the library of games available.

@Utena-mobile I don't think the purchases will be twice. I think you'll have to keep paying monthly (or bimonthly or whatever plan you select etc) to access them. I don't remember how it worked for Stadia, I know you had to purchase the games but I don't know if they were held captive behind a monthly pay wall, too.

And the problem is that it's way too early to make claims, but it's so easy to see where this leads even a gaming journalist could immediately find it.

@Scirius I'm feeling very doomer today I admit. Saw the negatives instead of the positives immediately.

@Nenoeil You're right for the most part, but my specific argument was for the future. Ten years from now, what's it going to look like? Will I be able to still download games to an Xbox console or handheld, or will they have been phased out completely? Will future purchases after a certain date be cloud streaming only? OD is going to be the start of a precedent for Xbox, since it's a confirmed streaming only game.

Something I can do now, downloading a game I've purchased, may not even be possible. Accessing said games might be locked to streaming only, behind the Ultimate/streaming tier. So I'll have paid them just to pay them more, even though none of this was even a consideration for years. And yeah I get the argument "ten years is so far away, do you really care?"

Ferris Bueller is haunting my dreams because I still vividly remember summer nights in 2008 playing Gears with friends and smacking the side of my 360 to get it to read the disc. And life has already shot two decades ahead to digital libraries and discs no longer being a thing Xbox even produces for their consoles now.

@NEStalgia How are you finding PC gaming in general? Do you have yours hooked up to a TV like a console?

@GuyinPA75 @Balaam_ Yup. Imagine not liking options when you are away from home. Some people do leave their house for things.

@Elbow Not like Movies and TV haven't gone this way for years already.

@Raffles Absolutely loving it. So much more polished than it was in 2008 that's for sure!

Where it gets cumbersome is simply the sheer number of stores I'm using plus the mandatory ubi and ea launcher etc, but that's just the price of bargain hunting! Plus the sheer number of peripherals now (Sim wheel, pedals, shifter, flight stick, rudder pedals, throttle, yoke, and then switched brands of each, plus vr headset and multiple "vr injector" packages to run non vr games in VR, etc) plus mod managers. So a lot of software involved but that's all for optional extras you don't get on console to begin with. Remove all that is it's smooth sailing. Only crash I've had not related to forcing vr into non vr games, is blops6 lol, curse you Xbox! Plus drm being down and unable to launch things with nonsense errors..... Which is only an Xbox store thing lol. (You can now assign primary pc just like on console, though, they just added that )

I'm not using a TV specifically but I didn't use a TV for console either, I play everything on a monitor, close up, but I have it running through the home theater HDMI hookups anyway. A monitor is just a TV without all the fancy features, it's not like the old VESA days where monitors and TVs are completely different.

@NEStalgia Ah I see, the reason I asked is a lot of people seem to have this old fashioned view of PC gaming whereby you have to connect it to a monitor via VGA or something

I'm more of a big screen gamer myself, so as well as consoles, I've actually had a PC connected to my living room TV for about a decade, with wireless controller. And a wireless keyboard for navigating Windows. Works perfectly, especially with the help of Playnite fullscreen, which gives a basic console esque frontend to select games etc.

A lot of what you say is true, PC gaming is as complex as you want it to be. If you just install Steam, buy some games, and install Playnite (or even just Steam big picture mode) it's closer than ever to a console experience

What CPU/GPU do you have btw, and are you generally happy with performance?

@Elbow Sorry, you're right. I worded it wrong. I meant that we pay the first time when we buy the game, but then we are forced to pay again by subscribing to GPU.

@Raffles Lol, yeah I find it hilarious how many "tech enthusiasts" seem to have a complete lack of awareness of current computer tech, and are a decade or two out of touch. It's like people arguing over which fancy microwave makes you a top chef 😂

Yeah I have an unorthodox setup, where I'm not a desk gamer, left that behind ages ago. It's fun when you're a school kid, it's not fun when you spend all day every day at a desk. But I'm near sighted, and would rather not wear glasses just to play games, and even on the TV across the room, it's still too far/small to see proper detail and text, so I bring it up close and have a 27" 4k HDR monitor on a diy swivel mount on a microphone boom pole that just swing around in front of the couch lol. And I have one of those little controller sized wireless keyboard/track pad units that just sits with my controller. Works perfectly!

Though these days I'm using my VR more than the normal monitor. And if doing sims I have to drag the "folding" race or fight stand out (lol, folding is still bulky and weights like 65lb with all the gear on it!). Regular VR gaming I just grab my hmd and controllers and away I go. No TV/monitor needed.

Playnite is a drug. That and RGB software if you have rgb. I've spent whole nights just playing playnite 😂 I use it on my ally/legion on full screen. I intended to on the big rig, but my frequent use of vr injectors and messing with racing/flight peripheral tools, I found it was too often in the way when I needed to get to the desktop, so I'm just using desktop mode now, but full screen is so nice. Before I started using it I was going crazy with gog, steam, Xbox, ubicon ect, ea, epic, and double-buying too often!

Lol, weeeeeelll, I went just a teeeensy bit overboard and bought a 7800x3d and 4090 😂. I wasn't going to. Swore up and down I'd never buy those absurd cards, and for straight pancake games there's not a chance I ever would, the thing is ridiculous overkill for everything. But because I'm big into VR injection which is EXTREMELY punishing on a GPU, I kind of had to, and, even 4090 is insufficient there. It's all brute force.

I decimated finances and probably can't afford the next upgrade though. Technically I'd need a 5090 to go with my original intention of getting a Pimax Crystal Super (>4k x2... Something like 9k native) but having also invested in the racing and flight rig I should probably be done with spending on anything for the next half decade though! Maaay still get the Pimax because I do have the reservation already. But will have to make it sing on the 4090 for years , even though the say the super isn't really much better than light on current cards due to the display port bandwidth limit.

I probably won't upgrade the pc for quite some years!

@Utena-mobile Except you aren’t being asked to pay twice. You pay once for the game and then an optional subscription for the convenience to play anywhere (to go along with the other game pass ultimate perks). Do I wish that this feature would be free? Of course, but it’s not some kind of scam they’re running. I just wish the cloud gaming was more of a finished product to make the extra price more worthwhile. I used to use the Amazon Luna cloud service years ago and it ran amazingly, way better than Xbox cloud gaming.

@S1ayeR74 The situation with Flight Sim 2024 is already well on the way to being fixed, and it was outright that they didn't expect that many people would be using it.

Outside of that, xCloud is stable, and I've only had a couple of issues that were not deal-breaking. If the future of gaming is in the cloud, Microsoft are uniquely positioned to move into the cloud ecosystem without changing very much at all.

Yes, moving the entire of a game into the Cloud, that failed rather badly. But streaming gameplay... That's worked for years, and I'm not going to ever say xCloud is doomed to fail.

What a joke. MS proved they can’t handle so much as a single cloud game (Flight Sim 24) so here’s to 50 more failures!

@Trmn8r This is a very fair point. And I still use Movies & TV. Downloading is still an option though, even when obvious caveats. It's still there, so I hope that will be a thing for games too.

I know I'm sounding giga-doomer just spouting the worst case scenario, it comes from a place of concern, not hate.

@clnabhan It's also a bit of a forward thinking thing. Obviously right now it's just optional to use the ability to stream your library, and I hope it stays as just an optional choice... but Xbox directly stated years ago that their real competitor was Stadia. It got memory holed because of how fast Stadia imploded, but thinking forward to this future of "every screen is an Xbox", where it's streaming only, will it be a future where Xbox no longer makes hardware and stops supporting the old consoles? Where your digital library and content is only accessible via streaming, which is locked behind paying for GPU/a stream only tier?

The concern comes because this is something that has to be asked now, before it's too late. It might not happen 5 years from now, maybe 10, 11, or 12 years. But the concern is that theres a very clear goal they're aiming for, or could be, in how every screen is an Xbox and every users library is another way to generate monthly revenue. Pay to access what you've already purchased.

But...but...but .... Xbox is dying. 😂

It should be obvious to all but the most obtuse now that it's not. Stadia showed MS the future and they paid attention. MS is evolving the platform to make money. That agenda currently benefits players. More games on more platforms means more players aka more money. I honestly don't understand how people can't see this.

MS isn't a fanboy doing this to be magnanimous. They are doing it to make money. They got greedy during the XOne release and got burned. Now they found a better way to make money and gain player base. It's currently a win win as long as they continue to have competition.

@Moby Stadia showed MS the future.. of failure, winding down, and mass refunds.

@Balaam_ I have played over 500 hours of RDR2 on Stadia, on my BIg ass Tv, my normal sized laptop and yes on my phone.

all without lagg or any form of degredation.

Not going to lie: the ability to stream FFXIV without having to download updates on any device is a GAME CHANGER

This is really good to see. That Cloud was limited to Game Pass (and a couple others like Fortnite) was such a hindrance. I hope that more games are added in time.

I'd love to be able to play Star Trek Online on the go as it's a game with a lot of daily missions that you can miss if you're travelling or out and about.

So let me get this straight. We pay for game pass to stream games from game pass that we most likely don't own just to be able to stream games that we own. When we can already do that with games that are not a 360 game or Xbox original game. Without having to pay for game pass ultimate. Next your going to tell me pencils have erasers!

@Raffles Thanks for the heads up on playnite. I have a decent PC (i9 9900k, evga ftw3 ultra 3090, 64meg ram etc etc) but I never use it to game as using windows and half a dozen store fronts is not the same experience as a decent console, so I barely ever game on it. Maybe play nite might help the user experience for me... I hope so!

Good to see Microsoft finally getting it together for some streaming at last. I wander if the timing is prompted by PS announcing you can now stream 150 titles if you own them to the PS portal? You have to be subbed to top tier of PS plus too, so nobody gives this functionality for free, but I am often offered the option to stream an owned game on a ps5 rather than install it.
1080p streaming is still not my chosen way to play of course, but I often use streaming while deciding if a service game is worth the download and the experience is surprisingly good.
I'd like to see MS increase the rate and quality of its roll out, as with their tech muscle they should be the streaming pack leaders..

I wonder how slowly it'll roll out support for more titles after the initial 50? It's very nice to have this after waiting so long, but I'm already very curious about the limitations and blind-spots. It's only really a big draw if you can play the majority of your library. Once they're close to that, this is massive.

Ignoring all the problems with this being games that "you own" which most people don't do with game pass ultimate..... is it still limited at 1080p though, which is brought down even more by the fact its the series s versions of all these games that are being streamed.... so like 600p resolution of a low graphics version of Hellblade 2 at 28fps............ WITH Xbox cloud's notorious input lag.

@NEStalgia Haha, sounds like quite a slick setup you've got there, with the swivel monitor n' all

And ha, that's exactly what I used to have, a little pocket size keyboard, I think a Rii. I now use a Logitech KB400, almost full size with trackpad etc, and just keep it on the TV stand or sofa.

And wow, sounds like you really went for it with your rig A 4090 plus bundles of extra kit too.

What wheel do you have and what seat do you have it attached to? I might get one of those PlaySeats.

You know, I was going to say the same thing about not having to upgrade for years. Yes, top spec Nvidia cards are extortionate these days, but the top cards tend to have tonnes of horsepower and stand the test of time.

Even the 1080ti from 2017 is very close in performance to the SeriesX and PS5, and can still play modern games. Albeit without DLSS obviously.

And the 2080ti that came out in 2018? That's as good as a PS5 Pro, which is absolutely nuts. That has really stood the test of time. Partly thanks to its massive 600gb/s of memory bandwidth.

So yes though it's expensive, with your 4090 at least you don't need to think about upgrading for a good few years, with its 82 TFLOPS, 1 tb/s of memory bandwith, and 24gb VRAM

Very interesting what you said about VR injections though, even the immense horsepower of the 4090 is not quite enough in some cases.

It makes sense though if you think about it. As obviously they are not games optimised for VR. And the scene has to be rendered once per eye, at a high resolution, AND a high framerate. With games that are ported to VR, various cutbacks and optimisations are made to make them more viable for normal hardware. As you said, with mods you're just brute forcing it.

@Raffles we have the same keyboards! The Rii is my daily login, mod/vr config driver, and I take out the Logitech if I have to do more heavy setup (Skyrim modding 😂).

I didn't get a hard seat cockpit, no room. But my couch is about the right height anyway and isn't going anywhere so I got a GT Omega Apex stand. The thing is rock solid. I originally just had at Thrustmaster T300 which was honestly great, but upgraded to a Logitech Pro (was looking at Moza R12 but people raved about Trueforce in supported games for immersion, and for VR, immersion rather than force is more important to me. Plus most reviews said that the ffb quality in the Logitech was better despite its huge profile for a direct drive. The thing weighs like a sandbag. The only negatives are it's huge compared to everything else for an 11nm and no fancy first party wheels which isn't important to me.

Ironically I talked about the pimax and they just had a presentation today with a lower cost and 2 year subscription for payment and are taking orders now. Doesn't have the OLED bundle though, looks like that'll be sold totally separate but the same price it was going to be in the bundle. I might bite lol

Yeah wukong vr even on quest strains the GPU hard. Can't get 90fps at all on quest 3. Can't imagine on>8k pimax lol. And then there's Dragons Dogma2 in VR 😂

Yeah injection is rough. Basically double rendering (two rendering cameras) also at insane resolution, and also at insane fps, and also can't use tricks like frame Gen, and the games don't let you turn all the stuff off. It's very imperfect. But being able to play aaa(a) games in VR, it's still so worth it. Doesn't work with everything but either true vr mods or "Giant simulated 3dtv" modes like vorpx still make flat screens seem dated.

@Utena-mobile True. Good point. The people at Microsoft need to figure out exactly what they are selling to gamers and just be clear what their goals are without being vague. The “gaming everywhere” experience is why I moved to Xbox after being a lifelong PS gamer, but they need to do a better job both with the actual experience as well as with their pricing model. If everything is gonna be an Xbox then, like you said, you shouldn’t have to pay to play games you already bought. It just seems like bad or confusing marketing.

@Elbow it’s a scary future to imagine, but look how quickly mobile gaming went from buying games to having a “free to play/pay to win” model. Yet it is extremely profitable for companies and ruined many games.

@CaptainCluck Google's propensity to abandon projects doesn't mean streaming isn't the future. MS realizes that. Sony does too but their fighting to hold onto their cash cow of exclusives as long as they can.

@NEStalgia OK that's interesting about the GT Omega, that has caught my eye before. Looks more practical than the huge PlaySeat, even if it's in my office rather than living room.

I might have to get one

So how much of an upgrade do you find the Logitech Pro compared to the Thrustmaster T300?

@Raffles The Omega Apex is rock solid. I ended up buying 2, one for flight, one for racing (flight required those desk clamps with the red lever to lock it on to get it all on). I actually could do it all with the one, but the pedals don't both fit. And my Winwing rudders are wider than the Omega and the foot pedal part sticks into the fold, it's too wide, so I needed to rig them to just sit onto fixed bolts and lift them off when folding. The racing stuff fits fine.

The only thing that' I'd caution with the omega Apex is folding it is ridiculously heavy. The frame is like 28-30lb, then the 11nm DD wheel is another 10-15, then my hydraulic pedals are like 23, and a few pounds for the shifter, cables, so the whole thing is probably 50-70lb to pick up and move around! Not an easy lift to put away even if it does fold pretty compact (though the the pedals protrude straight forward even folded!) Still better than a PlaySeat for storage, but you need the forearms of a real racecar driver to move it around lol.

How much of an upgrade can get wooly. TBH the T300 is really really good for what it is. I don't think the amount of force is a huge issue, it has enough (for small diameter wheels), and honestly feels very good. DD is much better of course but I think it's possible to be happy with the T300. Where the DD comes into play is the reaction time. There's a lag and latency to the T300 because of the nature of belts and pulleys. When you're into a turn and feeling the force steadily it feels fine. It's those smaller prods, bumps, spinouts, etc where it always feels like the force is lagging slightly to the effect, and the "softness" in feel that quickly changes direction (tires losing traction then going into a spin, etc) where it feels disconnected. That's where direct drive shines, because it's instant and full force in those rapid direction changes. For me, playing in VR, it's more highlighted because the immersion is absolute, and that stuff breaks the illusion. It's also why I got the Logitech over, say, Moza, because the much maligned TrueForce, does add to immersion and in VR, immersion is king.

If you're just looking to race around with something that has some good feel and can make turns feel good etc, I think the T300 is more than great for the money and really does the job. If you're looking for either maximally competitive racing online (not me), then gear tuning just like real racing is everything on the track, and/or if you're looking for maximal immersion (me) or large diameter wheels (MPI makes a 15" full size stock car wheel for the Logitech, I have one on order!) then high force matters and DD nuisance matters.

The Logitech (or any DD) is a huge upgrade to the T300, but where the difference shines is in the nuanced quick feedback moments more than the high tension big turns, and it might not be that big a difference if you just want to feel the G's when turning.

@NEStalgia The GT Omega sounds pretty good, heavy or not I like the fact it's foldable, but also you can add a chair if you want to make it basically like a PlaySeat

Thanks for the info about the wheels too, it's basically what I imagined actually, about DD.

The power doesn't seem like the attractive part, but the response times. For example I'm still rocking a humble G29, and tbh at max strength I consider it has plenty of power, enough to give a convincing feeling of feedback. The issues are more the latency and crunchiness of the gears, and the noise

So yes I can imagine DD being great in the immediacy of the feedback, especially as you said, subtle quick effects.

Even though Fanatec and Moza seem like the go to DD wheels in the simracing community, I like the look of the Logitech DD more because of compatibility tbh.