Well it’s both on Android, and they just added console-only streaming to iOS, so yes @Misguided, it’s new to iOS.
Dammmn. That makes me tempted to pick up an x series at some point, some I have e ultimate through early 2023
Timex
1806
They actually have both now.
You can stream games from your Xbox directly, via the xbox app, or you can play games from the cloud, via the gamepass app.(Basically Google stadia)
I tested the cloud gaming today, and it worked very well.
I loaded up the gamepass app on my chromebook, connected my elite controller via Bluetooth, and was able to play games pretty much without issue. There wasn’t any lag or latency, at least not that i noticed.
I tried playing gears 5, doom eternal, and sea of thieves. They all played fine on the chromebook.
The one issue i had, was that the controller would stop responding after a while. I think this was a Bluetooth issue on the chromebook side. I’ll have to test it to see if I can localize the issue.
LMN8R
1807
Cloud gaming is through the game pass app, since you can only stream game pass games from the cloud and you don’t need a console or pc to do it. It launched about a month ago and had quite a bit of press around it. It’s only available on Android though due to Apple’s restrictions in the App Store.
Remote play is via the Xbox app and you’re streaming anything installed to your console. It’s available on both android and iOS.
Sure, I know that now. But it seemed to me like the first year or so they were talking about this, there was no mention of Stadia-style cloud gaming. And then it was there, and everyone else seemed to think that’s what it was always about.
Timex
1809
Technically, the cloud gaming stuff is still in beta.
This article here talks about running it on chromebooks, and it matches my experience. Overall, extremely positive, with the exception that I need to figure out what causes the controller to become unresponsive.
I think that’s on you. They’ve always talked about it being cloud gaming. It was only relatively recently that they even explicitly tied it to your Gamepass library.
Here’s an announcement from back in 2018, where they explicitly call it cloud gaming, and talk about reaching “mobile only gamers”.
Also, you know, it’s called xCloud.
That’s not really fair to say it’s on him. While yes you found one announcement that was cloud-only focused, I distinctly remember Phil Spencer talking a lot in interviews about streaming your current console to mobile devices while you are out, and a LOT of news sites picked that up as well. They would talk about that same thing at the same time while talking about xcloud and not making a separation between the two.
Microsoft has a history of muddling the waters.
Plus I remember when I first joined the xCloud beta, I was easily able to stream from my console using the beta. But I didn’t even realize there was a separate tab that allowed me to stream from the cloud until I read about it online.
(The current xCloud setup through the game pass app is easy in comparison).
But it does both, so “muddying the waters” isn’t really fair. Every single announcement and news piece I looked at just now talks about the cloud. And like I say, it’s in the name. You could be forgiven for thinking it didn’t do from-console streaming, but the other way round?
Maybe I"m just not keeping up with the conversations here, but my understanding was this confusion stemmed from the IOS app that can only do console streaming and not cloud streaming, and yet the messaging on that wasn’t clear.
Or maybe I"m just mixing up my threads.
Well it started with this, which I take to be referring to the xCloud stuff. You’ve been able to do remote play from your own console for ages (though maybe not on iOS).
Timex
1816
Just to be clear, even on Android, the XBox app can only do console streaming.
Streaming from xCloud is done via the Gamepass App, which I suspect Apple doesn’t even allow on their platform.
RickH
1817
It does, the version of the Android app that has xCloud is the “beta” version of the XGP app, which has a white icon versus the usual green one. iOS only has the non-beta version with no xCloud.
I tried out xCloud on a 9th gen Fire tablet last weekend, and it worked pretty well for a WiFi connection, about as good as connecting to my own Xbox. And a hell of a lot easier than waiting for an 85gb install of Fallout 76 to finish.
Timex
1818
Negative, the prime time version of the XGP app on Android has xCloud now. You no longer need the beta version with the white icon.
LMN8R
1820
The Game Streaming Preview launched about a year ago and it covered both console streaming (now called remote play) and Project xCloud (which was always streaming from the cloud). There was a site which explained this pretty clearly (no longer available since both launched properly) but the messaging at E3 was a bit confused along the way.
It was basically just a preview of the streaming technology used by both xCloud and Remote Play, so there was some inherent overlap.
Timex
1821
So I did some more testing, and it seems like the controller problems I’ve been seeing are related to the chromebook… from doing more investigation, bluetooth devices seem to randomly disconnect for periods of time. They will then eventually reconnect. I can’t see any reason why this is happening, and looking into it online it looks like chromebook bluetooth just kind of sucks for everyone.
Doesn’t look like any way to fix it, which is disappointing because the chromebook seems to play xcloud games very well.
LockerK
1822
You’re tempting me to give this a shot on a government surplus i7 laptop I picked up recently. Should be fine if a chromebook can run it I’d think.
Timex
1823
Oh, it will easily run, assuming you have a good internet connection.
Like i said, the only limit on the chromebook is the Chromebook’s garbage bluetooth controller.
