Excellent article… Lately I feel the same way… Been playing State of Decay 2 exclusively on my phone… This has been a game changer for me…
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Yep. That’s how it feels. It’s the future. I just played some Halo CE and it was just cool. It didn’t feel different as I was just playing Halo… But I was laying down in bed. Then I can switch to another game instantly. The best part about it is the same that was the best part from physical to digital… Instant access. I don’t have to download in order to play the game I want to play. I just click a button and off it goes. That’s the future.
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Exactly… That’s exactly how I felt… Idk why but I also felt so good wen I opened Spotify by mistake n I could just listen to music on my bluetooth headphones while still being able to hear the game perfectly… In bed… Lol… Idk why but it also helps me concentrate more on the objective of the game… I THINK wen 5G becomes mainstream, many ppl will choose Xcloud over buying a Xbox…
Once they figure out a way to enable vibration feedback on your phone, it will really elevate cloud gaming for me.
As it stands right now, it’s a good mobile solution.
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At some point down the road, they will be positioned to stop releasing console hardware and simply upgrade their server blades with new hardware. Imagine the potential this could bring. Customers would instantly be converted to the install base of that new hardware tier. They wouldn’t need to pay much, if anything, to upgrade. MS could put the install base in gradually and even offer premium users the chance to test the newer tech ahead of an official ‘launch’ even.
And when that day arrives yrs from now (under 10 yr, maybe ~5 yrs perhaps), MS will be sitting in a dominant spot in the market.
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While I would prefer if Cloud Gaming does not become the “default” way to play (I like owning my games too much) I would be lying if I said I was not blown away playing Horizon 4 on my phone.
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<3
The Game Pass team knocked the user experience design out of the park for this app.
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Absolutely! Just went home to my parents and this all worked flawlessly even with a WLAN repeater over two floors. 5 GHz has been a must for me though, 2.4 Ghz never really worked out for me at all.
The Razer Nishi attached to my phone actually pretty much makes the screen Nintendo Switch-sized, and boy does my smartphone have a way better screen than the Switch. I freaking played Devil May Cry 5 on xCloud earlier today, a pretty demanding game where a ton of stuff happens on the screen, and being a title that would definitely not get ported to Nintendo‘s console. And I just picked it up from where I left the game from my Xbox One X. Just magical, Xbox‘s cloud saving doing all the trick. DMC5 even knew I had set the game to inverted Y axis, really cool!
Nintendo might possibly have a successful Switch 2, but the future is Game Streaming, especially once 5G drops and data caps are finally sorted out.
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I agree. Ever since the update dropped, I’ve been playing Wasteland 2, switching between the console and xCloud. Have a couple of hours to burn through? Console. Only have 10 minutes to play? xCloud. 30 minutes of play before bed? xCloud.
Now I want them to update the server blades to Series X blades real bad, lol. I want an even faster experience, with negligible loading times, and higher resolutions and framerates if my connection supports it. Would also like to adjust the video stream ratio so I don’t have black bars on screen, like Netflix or YouTube. My Note 9 is 18.5:9, I believe, and a lot of phones nowadays are tall like that.
I am excitedly waiting for the games library to greatly expand on September 15th. Would also be really nice to be able to play Game Pass PC games on xCloud, as I have the Ultimate subscription, but I don’t have a PC, so I’m missing on part of the library. If they plan to only have server blades out of console hardware, then maybe the game needs the port anyway and only when it’s ported to console will it launch on xCloud?
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So I was at work today in the wee hours when nothing was going on. Booted Xcloud on my phone and played some Mortal Kombat, some Halo MCC, some Forza Horizon 4. All looked great on my S9+. After a while it just hit me… This is the Xbox portable I always wanted. It was flawless. And it was all pretty surreal. And to think that by sometime next year Xcloud will be upgraded to the Scarlett (next-gen) blades. That type of quality on a portable is beyond what any of us expected so soon.
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Just played Halo Reach on my S20+ via WLAN. Seriously this is magical in a way. It really worked flawless and there was no lag, I am not shittin you guys. Used the 5ghz band. This is so cool. I just wonder how it would work via mobile network but here at home is was awesome. Definitely getting the razer kishi now.
Caveat: I have very fast Internet!
I thought about that when this entire Xcloud thing began. Imagine an E3 in the future (or whatever is in it’s place), they walk up on stage “Starting November 15th, Xcloud Premium will include the next generation of hardware capable of full path ray tracing on every game you own…” or something like that. Hardware upgrades could be damn near shadow drops. Development kits are in the cloud. Studios can have no building and no dev kits and be fully operational in terms of next gen development.
People are grossly under-estimating how much the entire industry is going to change in the next 5 to 10 years. Especially as 5G adoption hits critical mass.
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Welcome to Xbox Era.
Yes, it’s all beta until they get those XSX blades in then they can really push it. Probably this time next year they will be talking TV Apps etc
I’m so jealous of android users right now. I hope Microsoft and Apple can work something out eventually. I really want to try it.
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Same here, but Apple for sure sees this as direct competition and I am confident they will do nothing…because…well Apple lol! My phone upgrade is middle of Nov. and never thought I would say it…Android…here I come.
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Microsoft would have to make some compromises if Apple won’t budge because it’s too big of a market and Apple knows it sadly. I do think MS and Apple can work something out higher up like azure servers for X% off for X amount of time stuff like that.
I’ve been playing it through mobile and SHIELD TV over the past year, it works so great - much like geforce now. I think this is MS’s way into Asia in all honesty.
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Yeah this + machine learning is radically going to change how games are made, their fidelity, and the way games and ‘hardware’ generations are even delivered. I am starting to think FlightSim 2020 might be the bellweather here. It is easily the most next gen game out anytime soon, moreso than R&C by a long shot imho. The fact a small studio made it is alarmingly impressive.
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So I’ve been in xcloud beta since the beginning. I am assuming they will add ALL game pass games at launch including back compat games as well. Because thus far its always been a sub set of xbox one game oass games?
That is their plan but the launch is still a beta, lol. Might not get real launch until XSX launch or maybe even 2021 when they do the transition to XSX server blades. Might be better that way tbh, as it’d give em another holiday season in open beta at scale, which is a good thing in case stuff struggles. They can just blame it on it being a beta. 