Aside from that, the match ran perfectly. The game’s resolution maxed out at 1080p, and the game stuttered momentarily once or twice. (I didn’t want to be the weak link in a match against other players, in case Xbox Cloud Gaming wasn’t up to snuff.)

I decided to try my luck in a round of capture the flag, teaming up with two other live players against three not-terribly-bright AI bots. I loaded up the Halo Infinite multiplayer beta, which took less than a minute from browsing the Xbox Game Pass menu to setting up my first match. Microsoft may not be promising perfect parity for streaming titles, but the company clearly believes it’s close enough for competitive play. Other titles include fast-paced fare such as Dragon Ball FighterZ, Gears 5 and Sea of Thieves. This is one of hundreds of games that support Xbox Cloud Gaming on consoles. That’s why I decided to put the program through its paces with a game that had essentially zero margin for error: the Halo Infinite multiplayer beta. Of course, 'console gaming, minus the console' would be a wild fantasy if Xbox Cloud Gaming didn’t work properly. So, what’s the advantage on an Xbox One or Series X/S? Streaming makes sense for devices like Android phones or productivity laptops, where running a full Xbox game would be impossible.

A few days ago (November 17), Microsoft announced that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers could now also stream games directly to Xbox consoles.Īt first, this may seem counterintuitive: Why stream a game to a dedicated console? Even under ideal streaming conditions, a downloaded game offers a better experience, with steadier resolutions and frame rates, and no threat of lag or disconnections (at least for offline games). Over the past year, Microsoft has expanded this functionality, also allowing users to stream many of those games to Android devices and non-gaming PCs. Microsoft offers a subscription service called Xbox Game Pass Ultimate ($15 per month), which lets users download more than 400 games to Xbox consoles and/or PCs. In case you haven’t followed the evolution of Xbox Cloud Gaming, there’s some background you need to know.

Xbox game pass stream