Xbox Cloud Gaming Will Soon Work Outside Of Game Pass

This is awesome!

Depending on what games they pick I'm really excited for this ..or eventually all games now that would be amazing ,I really hope that the way Microsoft is going with this

This will be fantastic. I can understand some regressive publishers opting out of this, but I hope the majority of publishers simply opt in, this is better for everyone. Requiring a subscription makes me believe any participating publisher would even get monetary compensation every time a player streams a game they already paid for. If true, why would anyone say "no" other than exclusivity agreements with the likes of Stadia?

So for games you've already paid £30-£60 for you then need to pay an extra £10+ per month to stream them? Wow

@UltimateOtaku91 makes up for the £10 next gen upgrades and cloud saves Sony charge for ...and it's cloud streaming

Edit I should also day it's a free thing for GP users so no extra cost at all for everyone who subs

"Select games"? Not all games.

Depending on the meaning of "select games", this is huge, and is a thing I've been waiting for to make cloud gaming really useful. I knew it would arrive someday. People told me no, but I knew it had to! It mostly just finally pulls what GFN/Stadia had into xcloud.

But I do have to wonder how "select", "select" games are. Still, I assume that's a start and that list will grow rapidly.

OTOH, I've found a lot of "long queue times" trying to get into xcloud games lately, so it's starting to get overloaded already.

@UltimateOtaku91 That's the same model GeForce Now and Stadia use for their streaming (buy the game, pay for the service.) Stadia already proved it's a terrible business model by itself, but as an add-on to the GP features, it's a fine addition as a bonus perk. Having to "rent" a console for a fee to play the games hurts any argument for an all streaming future of games, though.

For existing customers it's just a perk over what we're already paying for not really a sales pitch though. Before we could stream only the library of games they're offering right now which hurt cloud gaming IMO, and if they move it off GP you just can't stream it anymore at all. Happened to me with Yakuza 0 which I was playing all streamed, and I moved to streaming it from my Series S as a dedicated streaming server. Which is still better because quick resume (when it works), but still... It would be nice to stream from my own library, too.

But I do think if they're going to argue for a streaming future they have to get rid of the fee to use the streaming. (Then again PS/Acti/2k is charging a $10-per-game-fee to use hardware in your $500 console....) OTOH, it literally is renting their consoles.....being free also doesn't make sense.

If it were a new service it would suck, but as-is it's a free perk added on, might reach new customers that don't want to buy a $300/500 console but don't mind renting one for $15/mo, but mostly it just throws a nice feature to existing customers for no new fee..... seems fair in general. If you already have GPU, you can now start streaming your own library, too. Or at least eventually when it's not "select games." I'm more worried about what "select games" means and if this cool perk becomes a useless perk.

It should be pointed out, competitively, that PSPlusPrem as of now doesn't have any plans of streaming PS5 games at all - even ones in the library. So MS is going all in on the full streaming feature-set as a competitive cloud service (vs Amazon, nVidia, etc) while Sony is purposely hamstringing theirs (despite the irony of being the first major cloud service. Oh, Jim, you silly bird... )

@NEStalgia @Martsmall I mean as gamepass user it's a great perk and makes gamepass even better for value, I understand that.

But I just think forcing people to pay for gamepass for cloud streaming of games they have already paid for (and some costing a lot already) is pretty bad.

@UltimateOtaku91 but most ppl will already have game pass anyway so it's a nice add on for them,the only problem I see for me is that hopefully some company's don't put a spanner in the works and not allow thier games to be part of it

@NEStalgia It's trash, it's not all games.

@Martsmall well this articles says "select games" which initially that doesn't sound too promising, but it could turn out to be hundreds at launch.

@Snake_V5 Trash? We don't know anything yet about which games will be selected, but I'm optimistic many games will become available through this service over a long period of time with probably only a couple dozen at launch. Also, if you already subscribe to Gamepass, this appears to be just an added feature with no additional cost. What makes this announcement trash?

This could be a good compromise to make wider use of streaming.

As almost all MS first party games are available day 1 on GP anyway it makes me wonder which games will be available on this service. If you didn't need GP it would be easy to offer this for ones already on the cloud, but since you need GP anyway that's not the case.

I hope they add more F2P games to the cloud like they've done with Fortnite.

@MaxC What makes it trash is because it's only select games and not all games.

@UltimateOtaku91 Yeah, I mean Stadia already proved that most would agree with you, lol.

This definitely works better building for existing customers than trying to build a platform out of paying twice. But at the end of the day, for new customers it's either buy a console or rent one forever....

@Snake_V5 Yeah, we definitely need to know what "select games" means, and if it's "select" forever or "select" means they're starting with some and will grow it from there. I could also see it meaning BC-only or non-BC-only etc.

@Snake_V5 There are well over a thousand playable games on the current gen Xbox platforms. Not even all of the Gamepass games are available on xCloud as of today, so clearly it takes time to support that compatibility. And in your opinion, this new feature is trash because they won't be making 1,000+ games available?

"Trash" would be something of no value. If they select one game you enjoy and make it available through this feature, it would be of some value to you.

@MaxC So you wouldn't want every game you own outside of Game Pass to be supported.

@Snake_V5 That would be ideal, but even a fraction of that is still great. This is already a frivolous feature - we bought the games knowing we would be limited to playing them on the console where we bought them. Now here they are saying some non-Gamepass games will also be available, so yeah, that's kind of cool and not trash. Just because a product or service isn't exactly the way I want it doesn't make it valueless. Do you know of any media-related products or services that could not be better in some way? And are the imperfect ones also trash?

This is a major step forward! Another great addition to Game Pass, value is already immense.
Do not forget that it is not up to Microsoft to decide if you will be allowed to steam a game from a none Microsoft studio. Some publishers are quite harsh with that.

And if you think streaming the game you own should be free, think again. It cost quite a bit to keep a gigantic gaming streaming cloud up and running, more so then a film streaming service.

Great news. Surprised it has taken this long but really good news.

Makes sense to me - you need a Game Pass Ultimate (or Streaming) subscription to use their Cloud based streaming service. In the future, some games may well be on their Cloud service that if you 'own', you can play on Cloud if your subscription allows - not just the Game Pass games.

Seems fair enough - you are using their 'streaming' service so need a Subscription. If the game isn't part of Game Pass, you need a 'valid' licence to play it so you'll need to purchase.

this really is most excellent news. but the fact that we will still be required to be subscribed to game pass ultimate. will be what holds back the progress of Xbox cloud gaming. Xbox cloud gaming needs to offered not only as a solitary service. but also offer a free base version to its Xbox community to be successful

@Martsmall the new cod says hi lol

@Would_you_kindly it can say hi all it wants I won't b playing it

@Martsmall well it's £70 at launch & they'll soon be owned by Microsoft so it's not just sony

I never said it was just Sony ???? And to be fair do you know for 100% that Microsoft will carry on this practice when they take over ? Nope no one does apart from Microsoft