Microsoft’s xCloud service — also known as Xbox Cloud Gaming — has been available on mobile devices for a while, available to Xbox insiders through the beta program and to a select few Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers through a browser on their PC. Yesterday, Microsoft announced that it would be bringing the feature to everyone else through the Xbox app on their Windows PC.
If you need a bit of a refresh on what xCloud can do, it’ll work similarly to how Google Stadia works (without the “negative latency” marketing garbage). If you don’t have a powerful enough system to run the games natively, you can effectively stream the games, like you would a Netflix show, to your PC.
Before you get your hopes up, South Africa isn’t on the list of supported countries yet, but that will hopefully change in the future. That isn’t to say that it’s completely unavailable to us here in SA. If you know your way around a VPN you might be able to use one of those, but that isn’t supported and you didn’t hear it from us.
Stream from your cloud or xCloud
If you already own one of Microsoft’s consoles, the company will allow you to stream your games to your Windows PC with a feature called Remote Play, presumably also through the app. This applies to the Xbox Series S|X and Xbox One.
You can stream it over your WiFi connection if you’re at home with your console or over the internet. Although obviously, the local WiFi connection will make for a much better experience than over the internet.
One wonders then if you’re at home with your Xbox, why not just play on the console? Maybe TV time is a premium in your house, in which case this could help.