Phil Spencer: Xbox Cloud Gaming On Console Has Changed How I Discover New Games

Can’t wait to try once the arseholes in the UK get me better internet, currently 5mb/sec.
so dam painful.

I would hope the guy who's been pushing an initiative at his company likes the product they're putting out.

That being said, I can believe it. This gives people an easy way to discover new games they otherwise might not have tried. Today, this is very nice. How long it stays that way is anyone's guess.

I guess I don't get it. Is downloading that much of an impediment? If it takes that long, then you probably have poor internet which means you're probably going to have an equally poor streaming experience. And if you have data caps (like me) you still have to mind how much you stream.

Is there any upside I'm not seeing? I'm not knocking it but I genuinely don't get the appeal.

Edit: I guess it saves space locally so that's something.

@zupertramp Even with gigabit, downloading can take more time that you want it to (plus its slower with another game running.) Plus, why waste limited write cycles on an SSD and wear it down for a game you try for 10 minutes and don't like? And with caps and the like, an hour of streaming a dozen different games to see which one you like is just an hour of bandwidth use at 1080p which sure beats downloading an 80GB+ game only to delete it!

It's definitely a boon. Maybe not for a game you know you want to play or buy like Psychonauts 2 or something, but if you're on GP you get to try a TON of games you otherwise might not and it's certainly a perk to not have to download those tons of games to save space/drive wear/bandwidth, etc. (Obviously, a small indie might be less bandwidth to download....)

Why is every Spencer fart an article on this site?

@NEStalgia okay okay, some valid points but for whatever reason I'm still not sold. Is it weird that I have some kind of strange affinity for playing games from my machine? Also I kind of like the idea of having to download things to play them as it provides like a interest threshold if that makes sense. Where I'm only likely to invest the time downloading a game if it's really all that interesting to me instead of "surfing" through different games out of sheer boredom, like doom scrolling through Twitter not because you want to but because there's an insatiable void in your life lol. Okay I'm being jokingly dramatic but still.

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned. I've only just recently gotten used to buying digital on a regular basis so, baby steps, but I'll probably get there.

one of the few things Microsoft has been behind the times on people have been able to stream games on their ps4 console since 2015

@zupertramp Haha, well, cloud in general isn't for everyone, and it's most definitely not for all internets. I kind of hate that about it. It seems like something for people "in the right zipcodes" in a lot of ways. But if you CAN benefit from it it's nice.

The thing you like about downloading proving an interest threshold is exactly the thing that they're promoting cloud to undo. It works nicely with Game Pass because you always have this big changing catalog of games to play, and probably an interest threshold for a small fraction of them enough to download. It lets you try any game at all on a whim with no real bandwidth or time cost. It's like walking up to an arcade cabinet somebody already put a quarter in. It's running...sure, I'll try it For small indies it's a nice quick way to try them, but downloading isn't so bad either. But something like Outriders, I never had enough interest in it to actually buy it, or even download a big, large game that I knew I probably wouldn't be over the moon about. But curiosity was enough for me to stream it for a few hours and see what it's all about. I probably won't play it again, and I surely won't buy it. But it was a fun few hours to check it out and see what it's all about. And it ALMOST hooked me enough to stick with it if it had stuck to the interesting beginning instead of becoming Borderlands 4....

@zupertramp
I'm almost 40 and I let go of buying physical games in the previous console gen. Now, I always hated the very idea of streaming games, but now I love xCloud and I can see myself playing cloud based games only in a few years. Yes, I do have a good internet connection (500MB/s) and I can download games rather quickly (though I have to say downloading on my Series S is way slower for me than on PS5- with all games switched off, too). I was shocked when I was able to play Halo 2 on my laptop within like 15-20 seconds. Downloading the entire Master Chief Collection (circa 150 GB) takes way longer than that. Ever since MS bumped up the performance of xCloud to match Xbox Series X consoles it's been a great experience for me. So much so, that I bought a Razer Kishi and turned my phone into a bona fide Switch clone. It is like you said. Baby steps. It took me a few years to accept digital only games and streaming. You'll get there eventually 😉

@NEStalgia yeah I hear ya. and not much of an endorsement for Outriders there, eesh.

@gollumb82 lol had to google Razer Kishi. My phone isn't nearly cool enough for that (it's essentially a cheap Walmart phone) but man is that thing ingenious. I really just need to get things up and running on my living room computer as it's hooked up to my big screen anyway but just haven't done it.

@zupertramp
xCloud works great on PC, as well. I haven't tried the app, though. Just the browser version.

@zupertramp FWIW I don't think I'd choose a cloud-only platform like Stadia, well, probably, like, ever for many reasons. xCloud performs great on a good connection, but there's still video compression/interpolation techniques that are visible, mostly in backdrops if you're turning fast, etc. still 1080p-noHDR only for the foreseeable future, latency can run hot or cold, it actually astounds me how well they can approximate no latency, but Quake of all things gives away the secret: It's doing predictive positioning like Splatoon does for other players (that leads to players teleporting) It's actually a lot better than how Splatoon does it, it rarely gives up the illusion, but Quake moves SO fast, and encourages you to move SO unpredictably that it can break the illusion and you can see the player have a mind of its own for a second. Generally though, I've actually been streaming a lot on a Surface tablet over wifi, with my Elite, and the wireless dongle (much better than BT....BT in the Xbox controllers is servicible, but even with streaming there's a big latency difference and avoids dropouts). Feels like playing a little Xbox on my lap most of the time.

BUT I prefer it the way Xbox does it, as a companion to local games so you can get the whole experience and not be locked into losing the "perfect" play to something like Luna or Google that you're stuck with streaming. It's an awesome companion to normal gaming, but not ready to replace it. I can stream Outer Worlds from my save from years ago on my X1X, and then go back to my XSX and pick up my streamed save. It's great. I'm curious how I'll use on-console streaming now that it's arriving, but I definitely think it'll encourage me to just give a ton of games a spin as they drop onto game pass and see what they're about without having to commit to a download and SSD writes. I'm from the arcade. When I see an awesome attraction mode, I have to put a quarter in and see what the fuss is about. This is that except without losing quarters, without TILT warnings, and without the obnoxious leather-clad punks that smell of pot and Bubble Tape.

@Xiovanni Are you sure you're not confusing xCloud with PS Now? PS Now does the 480-720p thing. xCloud has been rock solid with the exception of random sign-outs and periodic stutters/out of control characters for me (varies by datacenter, of course.)

@gollumb82 The app doesn't do streaming yet (well, Insiders have it in early access.) But works great in Edge anyway.

Kishi is cool for the Switch format, but I hate how it requires plugging into the USB-C. It's wear & tear on the socket and arbitrary charging of the battery on and off which isn't healthy. It's not as portable but I have Raiju Mobile which is more a full size controller with BT and a clamp. The up-side is you then have a tilt-screen which is a lot more ergnomic though so it's like a fancy DS.

@zupertramp Outriders...It's.....it's a shame really. The beginning is actually pretty cool. A lot of Mass Effect Andromeda meets Halo meets IDK what but it has nostalgia for games I can't remember but feel familiar. If it built upon that it could have been amazing. But I'm not sure it knows what it wanted to be. The menus scream of a full GaaS (the Division, Destiny, etc.) The hub feels like a GaaS. The questing feels like a GaaS. It's like they tried to make a GaaS, but then decided they couldn't support that (or Square told them no-go after Avengers) and retrofitted it into a campaign co-op game. Some things about it feel more focus (and less time wasting) than trying to solo Destiny 2, and yet it also feels less "grand" and more generic.) But if it kept up the momentum of the (very cool) beginning, I could have still loved it. But shortly after the "final frontier" feeling prologue it does a 180, turns into a savage wasteland survival society of outcasts, resistances, and marauders, and then the shooting arenas just feel like...endless shooting arenas, and it just feels like a semi-generic Borderlands spinoff. The shooting/cover-shooting FEELS great. They designed the combat play well. But....it's just "shoot the endless hordes and survive" too often in a setting that becomes rapidly generic (and brown.) From cool sci-fi expedition to a beautiful but hostile planet for colonization, to brown post-apocalypse looter shooter with a GaaS structure in the blink of an eye. It could have really been a great game, and the gameplay feels so good, mechanically. But it just sort of meanders and gets lost in its own ambition. It's not necessarily bad in any way, it's just that it's also not special in anyway.

@NEStalgia
I guess it's up to your preference. I had an 8bitDO SN gamepad for xCloud and the clamp along with the gamepad were lighter than the phone. I was constantly worried that it would end up on the floor. Also, the USB-C is a win for me. Zero latency, as opposed to BT controllers. I'm not worried about the battery so much. A few days ago I played Hades on xCloud using my phone along with Kishi, and I lost 20% of battery juice in two hours. I'd say that's a great result.

@gollumb82 The Raiju is definitely a heavy beast. The phone is still heaver and it's a little top heavy but the main controller is bascially more or less like an Elite in hand, so it balances well while playing.

No question USB-C is better controls (Raiju does come with a short little USB-C pigtail cable if you want to run it wired and as a power bank like Kishi.) But my bigger worry is just the wear and tear, and the power bank feature of the controller. Recharging the phone battery partially too often doesn't sound good for the long-term health of the controller.

I was actually all set to get a Kishi a few weeks ago for a more portable option, and then remembered why I avoided it in teh beginning. Phone gaming is short bursts for me.