Topic: Xbox Cloud Gaming

@LtSarge That's interesting about SS4. I'll probably try it tonight, so I'll see how it goes. I don't think the game should need to be optimized specially, though maybe something about the graphics just isn't compressing well and is throwing too much data. I wonder if it could be possible, since it was shadow dropped, that it's not actually available from all datacenters yet until it replicates so we're all hitting Seattle or something for that game? I would think there's a certain propagation time for new games to go online in all datacenters, which is probably part of the staggered launch times for popular games like Halo. It might take a day or so for everyone's closest rack to get the game actively. Totally a guess, but a logical one! But the network cable can't hurt for anything that's not SS4

So I got a network cable today and tried out Cloud Gaming and holy crap, it's like a completely different experience. I played Forza Horizon 5, Marvel's Avengers and Serious Sam 4 again and the gameplay is now flawless with no refresh and lag at all. I've even noticed that the frame rate is higher now than before, not because I've increased it in the settings but because the stream is simply able to output at a higher frame rate. The only problem though is that cut-scenes are still refreshing fairly often, both in Avengers and Serious Sam so I don't think it's a problem with one specific game. @NEStalgia Any suggestions on how I could improve that? It's weird that it only happens during cut-scenes.

But yeah, other than the game refreshing during cut-scenes, this feature genuinely works exceptionally well now. I'm definitely going to keep using Cloud Gaming in the future, which makes me glad since that means I don't need to buy a next-gen system for now!

@LtSarge That's awesome! That's strange that you're still getting refreshing during cutscenes, though. I can't think of any way they should be different than the gameplay. I wonder if that's happening on the server side/internet. I can't say I've seen the same, though I'm not sure I've seen many cutscenes while streaming on the new console app. Tons on PC (over wifi), but FH5 doesn't have much in the way of cutscenes, and the area in Yakuza 0 I've been in (economy building with Majima) hasn't had any. I did stream Serious Sam 4 last night and didn't notice any such behavior. The app crashed once, and couldn't reconnect automatically, but I didn't have any technical issues other than that, and the fact I'm positive I can't play a Sam game without a keyboard and mouse, so I die every 5 seconds

I don't have any advice on that, unfortunately. It's a little strange it would happen at all, but maybe the cutscenes feature harder to compress images, so it's a little more bandwidth. Other than some kind of network QoS optimization I don't think there's much that can be done. That would still be kind of annoying depending on the game. But it does seem weird if it's really only in cut-scenes. Maybe you're just running up against the start of the Halo download barrage interfering with the servers

Especially since next gen consoles basically are a myth, that's especially good!

@NEStalgia Ah, that's too bad! I did some research about QoS and I don't think I want to mess with that in all honesty, lol. Hopefully Microsoft will make some changes to Cloud Gaming in the future that may improve the experience. But yeah, it's definitely much better now and that's what's important. Been playing so much Forza Horizon 5 and Marvel's Avengers today. So much fun! Can't wait to play Halo later and maybe even more Game Pass titles that will be announced during The Game Awards.

@LtSarge Yeah, QoS is a world within a world, especially depending on how your network is setup, and only matters if you have other competing net traffic. I still haven't tried Avengers. I had it downloaded, and then my console failed, and they wiped the SSD in the repair (or replaced it?) and never went back to it! Between Halo and FH5, and the like dozen things I started on PS while my XB was out for repairs, I probably shouldn't add to the backlog

So I first played the base XB1 version of Halo Infinite since I couldn't find the Cloud Gaming option for the game and I encountered a game-breaking bug just an hour in and stopped playing it. Then I decided to try out the Cloud Gaming version since I finally found the option on another Halo Infinite app (apparently you can't access it on the Campaign app) and it worked flawlessly. In fact, this is actually the best experience I've had with Cloud Gaming. There were no refreshes at all, not even during cutscenes. What a wonderful experience it was and it just goes to show that CG is the way to go from here on out for me. I don't even want to test my luck with cross-gen titles anymore, I'll just play everything through CG. And man, those short load times! I can't stress enough how awesome this feature is.

@NEStalgia Have you had a chance to play Halo Infinite through Cloud Gaming yet? I played it for a couple of hours today through the cloud, checking out the open world and I'm still in awe at how smooth everything ran. It genuinely didn't feel like I was streaming the game. Even the cutscenes were showing up great with rarely any refresh. It's just incredible how well this feature works!

@LtSarge That's one I haven't tried. I had it pre downloaded before launch, and it doesnt let you stream games that are installed, or even partially installed for some reason... Next steamer was going to be Gunk and MW mercs 5 which I somehow missed existed at all until now!

@NEStalgia Apologies for the late reply!

Yeah, I noticed that as well, which kinda sucks. But if you do give it a try, do know that it's such a great experience. I've been playing it for six hours now through the cloud and it feels just like I was playing it off the system.

On top of Halo, I've been playing Forza Horizon 5 for 12 hours through the cloud and I'm genuinely convinced now that this is the future of gaming for me. Game Pass plus Cloud Gaming is such a phenomenal combination. I mean, imagine next year when Starfield comes out. You only need to pay €15 to play it through Game Pass Ultimate and then you don't even need to download the game or any day one updates or future patches (and considering it's a Bethesda game, it'll probably receive a lot of patches!). There's no lag, the game will run well since it's the Series X version and as a bonus, I can play it on my base Xbox One from 2015. It's bloody brilliant! Microsoft is genuinely paving the way for the future of how we play video games. I'm just so impressed by their work so far, and Cloud Gaming is still only in the beta phase!

I've been really impressed too on both my Series X and Laptop with Cloud gaming.

I didn't want to take the Visual hit on FH5 - especially on that opening intro sequence so downloaded that but playing some games I wasn't sure I'd like, certainly probably wouldn't of bothered with if I had to wait hours to download/install and/or 'hours' moving stuff around to make room on the limited internal SSD storage.

It surprised me how 'quickly' you forget its streaming and not local because the input lag feels remarkably similar. I certainly notice the drop in PQ over Local on my Series X as that is plugged into a 4k display so the 1080p stream with some noticeable compression at times isn't the same as 4k running natively - but considering there are a LOT of sub-1080p games (all the XB1 and older games that didn't get any 'X enhancements') and many of those with a lot lower graphical settings and world density, the streamed versions look 'better' than they do...

The console-less 'future' has been coming and some analysts think this 'could' be the last of the Physical generation. I think that its perhaps too soon to completely remove that choice for gamers - like completely removing the choice to buy 'Physical' discs (even though its just a Licence to play the game and may not even have the 'game' on the disc anymore), people should have the 'choice'.

With SSD storage also being 'expensive' per TB, game Assets and worlds getting much larger in Data size, I can see more and more games, especially Single Player big open world games, relying on the Cloud to actually run the game. Flight Sim is a good example as there is no way they could fit the entire Earth on a 1:1 scale with all those Airports in that much detail on a 'Bluray' Disc.

I don't really want a pure 'streaming' only future but at least my experience with Game Pass Streaming and the way games 'feel' to play takes away at least the 'fear' of streaming being detrimental to the 'feel'. I haven't tried a competitive MP like CoD where every ms matters with super quick kill times but in the games I have played, its very easy to forget that the game isn't running on your hardware...

@BAMozzy My biggest issue is just the sizes of video games today. More and more titles are becoming 100+ GBs in size and I can see that increasing over the coming years. It's just not feasible to either download or install hundreds of GBs every time you want to play one game. Even if you have a hard drive with lots of storage, the problem is the time you have wait before playing each game. I mean, isn't that what a lot of people have been complaining about for a long time now, i.e. you have to install games, download patches and so on while back in the day you can just pop in a game and start playing right away. Well, now we've come full circle thanks to Cloud Gaming; you can just press a button, wait ten seconds, and you're already playing the game. No download, no patches, you can start playing immediately.

So in terms of gaming on Xbox/PlayStation, that's probably going to be my primary approach. Nintendo on the other hand will remain the same I think because they are more about hybrid gaming and so you don't need to download hundreds of GBs. There are still updates you need to perform, but it's definitely not as bad as on PlayStation/Xbox.

I was watching a Japanese streamer play Ori and the Blind Forest through Cloud Gaming and I was surprised to see that the experience for her is pretty much the same for me. Whenever there's a cut-scene, the screen refreshes and whenever there's an explosion in-game, the screen refreshes as well. That's exactly how it's been like when I'm playing The Gunk as well, the screen refreshes during cut-scenes and explosions. So it seems like this is a common thing for people who use Cloud Gaming. Hopefully this will be the next thing that Microsoft improves upon because if this manages to get resolved, Cloud Gaming would be basically a flawless experience.