Xbox Game Pass Cloud Streaming (Xcloud) - Before You Buy By gameranx

Hi folks, it's your old pal Jake balding, the before you buy guy uh we're taking a look at Xbox cloud streaming today, uh also known as cloud. It's been a while, since we've done a hardware software before you buy thing like this, the last one was actually Stadia. Interestingly enough game streaming is an interesting topic. It's a fascinating topic. We did Stadia we're doing Xbox. Now we're probably going to do g-force now, as that starts to roll out, and just continue to talk about these things, because companies are putting a lot of money into it, a lot of resources.

Is it the future? I don't really think so. You know I've been skeptical of game streaming before, but I think what Microsoft is doing is at least kind of interesting. So, let's just jump in so here's how it works. Basically, you need an Xbox game pass ultimate membership. This is a game pass membership that works across PC and Xbox.

It's typically about 15 bucks a month. Essentially, it's like you're paying for premium game pass or Xbox Live, and the added benefit is this game streaming, so it works through the Xbox game, pass app on your phone, but you have to have an android phone running at least android 6.0 for our testing. We pulled our phones together using a pixel 3, a note and yeah the Galaxy Z fold 2, which I recently got and maybe possibly regret the game pass app that previously, just let you browse game, pass games and even cue them to start downloading on your PC or console. Now has this extra like tab that has games where you can cloud stream and there are over 100 titles on here, and they're, pretty decent choices. You know I mean the Witcher 3 is on here all the big Xbox, technically exclusive titles.

You know a lot of the game pass games, you'd expect. Obviously you need a Bluetooth controller, so you can basically just pair an Xbox One controller to your phone uh. We also had this racer fish mobile device. Full disclosure, Microsoft sent it along for testing. This streaming feature is technically still in beta, but now it's out in the wild after lots of invite-only stuff.

So you know if you subscribe, you can check it out. So that's what we did here, and we've been testing it out in a variety of places and different types of internet settings. You know my home internet is pretty average. It's also a cheap mesh network with some weak spots here and there. Our little production office here has that good, fiber optic stuff, and then we were also just out on the streets using our Verizon 4g LTE, usually because Verizon sucks, it didn't, have full bars of service, but we've been doing it in different environments over the past few days and results were okay.

You know most of the time it performed fairly strong, it's hard to dive too deep into this engaging performance, because everyone has different internet different service providers, uh different distance from servers stuff like that, but our performance most of the time was at least solidly playable. Although we had a surprising amount of visual stutter at times on even the high-end internet, the gameplay feels responsive and smooth. Like the input lag feels fairly good and better. Obviously, when it's directly connected, if there's a direct connection, you know there's still a bit of getting used to it, but yeah on the visual side, though, like I said every so often the screen, refreshes or stutters, and the overall fidelity isn't super sharp. You know we had it on some pretty high quality screens with higher screen refresh rates.

But personally I feel like some games just didn't look super high quality almost like if they were on PC they'd, be running at like medium settings. You know this is nitpicking. Of course, this magic streaming technology is still kind of technically a miracle, but worth pointing out, at least in these first impressions and generally for people who are curious. If we do compare it to Stadia, when Stadia work Stadia actually looks and performs better than this belief it or not. The Xbox streaming also doesn't boot up anywhere near as fast as Stadia either, but it's what they are doing here, how they're treating it that I think, makes the x cloud thing a little more justifiable, because you know game streaming, isn't for everyone, and it shouldn't really be an all-in thing.

Platforms like Stadia want you to buy their service and then buy digital versions of games. You may already own elsewhere for full price on their thing to stream. Only on Stadia Xbox treats it as something that just brings added value. You know maybe you're paying for game pass cool. Now you can get this as extra chances are you're, mostly going to still be playing games on your Xbox or your PC, or maybe even a gaming laptop, but the nice extra streaming ability on your phone is just something really nice.

If you have to go to grandma's house or something I don't know, it's just more of a nice something extra you know so, even if it's not quite perfect, you're glad to at least have it in a pinch, especially since it has some games that people do actually play ongoing and have communities like Elder Scrolls, online, black desert and maybe even eventually destiny, so to be able to jump in real, quick and do something or like collect a reward. That's pretty useful! It's the same reason why I like PlayStation remote play with like a vita or your PC. It's definitely not perfect, but it's a nice little extra if you just want to mess around or pop in a game. So if you treat Xbox game pass cloud streaming like an extra it's great, if you want to treat it as a full-time way to play games well, I don't think it's up to the job in that regard, and I don't think you should treat it that way. Anyway.

You know it's good if you travel a lot, although a lot of us don't really have much of a reason to go anywhere right now, so it's kind of launching in an interesting time also. I do want to clarify something just for the sake. I might be getting comments, I'm not being super harsh on this thing. Just because simply the buy-in price isn't asking for much. There is, of course, a subscription, but it is adjacent to that like you're, not buying games on this thing, so essentially your risk is less.

You know uh also other stuff. The app is definitely still in beta. You know with little annoying issues here and there we had to fight with it here and there to get games to show up with a little button that lets you stream it. Sometimes it just wouldn't be there it or takes too long to show up uh we've had a few crashes on various devices too. The biggest issue, though- and this isn't really Microsoft's fault- it's- that it's currently not available on iOS devices, meaning iPhones and iPads, which would be really nice, considering the massive market share.

These phones have not being on their sucks for a lot of people and Apple is starting to lighten up on these restrictions uh, but this is also stuff that is just still developing in the headlines right now. As of right now, it's not there. If you have an iPhone, you can't use this and that's a glaring omission again. Really, it's not really a Microsoft Xbox thing, but it's still worth pointing out. So in a time when we're not really going many places where we need to stream our Xbox games, it's nice to have, I was surprised how decent the performance actually was on LTE as well.

It was nice to just pop into a game outside somewhere. As long as I had a controller lying around. Of course, do you need it right now? No, not really I'd say if you're subscribed to this tier of game pass definitely at least check it out. You know, I said the same thing with stadium man. This streaming technology is exciting.

It's nice to see it in action. It's fun! Furthermore, it's just not for everyone. You know not. Everyone has good internet, but as an accompaniment to how you typically play games, that's how this should be, and at least Microsoft is acknowledging that here. So that's where we're at least as of right now, at the time of making this video.

This is a service like Stadia like GeForce. Now these things are going to be updated and grow over time, as these companies put more resources into them. Also, next up, hopefully we talk about GeForce now and whatever else is invented down the pipeline. We know that this type of video doesn't appeal to like the vast majority, but we know some people find it interesting. So thanks for coming around, I would like to hear from you guys in the comments.

If you are testing it, if you've been testing it since, like the alpha and beta days uh, what do you think now that it's out and finally here, if you just, are hopping on now as a consumer? What are you thinking? Are you down with some titles on board game streaming just doesn't work with certain types of games in terms of the latency but like maybe you're, playing through the Witcher or yakuza 0. I want to know what you're playing on this thing. Also, I do want to acknowledge the other side too uh. If you are more of a PlayStation fan, would you like to see them, invest time and money into something like this as just kind of accessory, a feature to PlayStation? Plus, let's talk if you enjoyed this video, though gotta say man thanks for coming around clicking that like button does help us, we would really appreciate that and if you're new consider subscribing hitting that notification bell, because we put our videos every single day, catch me on the Friday show every Friday talking about the gaming news before he buys I'm Jake balding thanks for watching pizza's on me,.

Source : gameranx