The Xbox PC App Is Now Rolling Out Cloud Gaming Integration

This is good news! Although, through Edge, streaming has already been working pretty well, and I imagine the App is really just using the same Edge internals already, so I don't expect it'll be very different, just a slightly tamed UI rather than having to maximize from within a browser widget and use browser navigation buttons to go through library pages. I would like to stop seeing the "you've been unexpectedly signed out" and the random little popup on the bottom trying to access some Visual Studio component every 5 min or so.

Not sure it'll really add anything other than a cleaned up library UI but I'm hoping it goes public very soon! Anything is better than the weird PSNow app that doesn't support resolution scaling on the desktop properly such that the min/max/close buttons are like 4 pixels wide and very difficult to hit. I like PS Now....it + GP is amazing, but that PC app is clearly very unloved by them, which is strange, because that was the whole original purpose of Gaikai.

More importantly the only major problem I've seen through Edge is certain games just don't launch at all. All 3 of the Fable games, Octopath, etc just won't start on Edge, but do on the Android app. I'm sure there's others. Hopefully this will solve that.

Glad the local streaming will finally work. I side-loaded the beta app a few weeks ago and it seemed like it worked, so I expected it would roll out soon.

I want them to bring GamePass PC games to the cloud. There’s a lot of games that aren’t on console that I’d like to play!

I was really pleased to read that the app had updated to support cloud and remote play and then realised it was for insiders. Hopefully the wider rollout is not far now, having remote play on my laptop would be great.

@SplooshDmg I somewhat don't care about Win11's features because so few PCs will really be running 11 for a long time. My newer Surface Pro will run 11, but my older one won't, etc. And with the 4 more years Win10 support and the fact only the past year's PCs run 11, it seems like background noise for now, even if it's nice. (And it's pretty integrated into 10 anyway.) And once it's in the app, I doubt that will matter much.

I still find it hysterical when I'm on an enterprise edition server and see Xbox icons all over it, and Xbox services running. That's just wrong.

I assume the app uses the Edge components and that the Edge components are pretty much baked into Windows already, so I don't know how singnificantly the Win11 features will differ. But yeah, I don't use Chrome, at all, ever (why would anyone subject themselves to that nasty spyware?? And Edge is built on the same engine anyway) but I think most people do, and everybody is just so used to ignoring Edge that most people try it only in Chrome and decide it's not that great. I figured from the start Edge is MS's own product so it makes the most sense it would work best there.

Other than the games that don't launch (which is really weird) and the random signout banner, and that annoying little periodic popup, the edge experience once you go full screen feels like it's really the app anyway. It's pretty solid. I've had to reboot a few times because it starts running sluggish, and I don't know why, but it's always the local machine acting up.

@SplooshDmg Honestly, I just don't get how "native to the OS" vs "install the app" is functionally different. Especially when lots of XB is already installed by default in 10.

I mean, do we really need to differentiate between "open MS store, install app" vs "it's just sitting there on your new Optiplex blade rack waiting to stream Forza"? While Playstation is advertising how to apply artic silver to your heatsinks?

Yeah, I still don't know what percentage of the market can really stream well, but if your internet handles it it really handles beautifully. Lag aside. I'm not sure how much lag is bluetooth and how much is streaming, but it is kind of disquieting when the camera rotates a few ms after you release the stick. It's annoying in DQXI but devastating in Forza. Overall though it works so well. Needs quick resume though But so far xCloud + Surface has largely replaced Switch other than handheld style games and exclusives.

Also, PS Now actually is pretty good. The app is its weakness. The scaling support on buttons, the controller handling (is abysmal), the lack of platforms other than PC/console, are its biggest weaknesses. Their online infrastructure isn't great, it's more prone to lag/stuttering, but generally speaking it works quite well, and they recently boosted the res from 720 to 1080p at least on console, not sure about PC yet, but it seems decent now. It's incredibly cheap for a year, and has a mammoth catalog. But the way they present that catalog (of mostly older games) is terrible. Just an alphabetized list, so you have to know what you're looking for to find it. And the categories like "RPG" don't show half the RPGs they have on the service. xCloud gets all that way better.

But with the two services combined, it does make me wonder why I have such a library of owned games at this point...

@SplooshDmg Ahh, I hadn't thought of things like HDR and such. Streaming to a tablet it doesn't matter to me, and if streaming at the big screen it's on the XSX. That makes sense. Though supposedly windows HDR itself needs some work.

@SplooshDmg Will crypto mining support for installed GPUs be built into 11 as well?

@SplooshDmg At least EA Play/GPU subscribers should automatically get to use cloud FUT farming access.

@SplooshDmg I mean darkweb currency is cool and all, but you can only do so much with a few thousand stolen credit cards. But a slice of the EA casino pot? Now THAT is some spending money....