Xbox Cloud Gaming Is Available On PC For Testers, Bringing Console Games To Computers

Microsoft is attempt­ing to make Xbox avail­able to 2 bil­lion play­ers, and a cen­tral part of that goal is through stream­ing and Game Pass. The com­pa­ny has now rolled out its Xbox Cloud Gam­ing ser­vice for the Xbox App on Win­dows 10 PCs in 22 coun­tries. You need to opt in to the Xbox Insid­er pro­gram, which is free and open to every­one, if you want to try out Cloud Gam­ing on PC.

You’ll also need to sub­scribe to Xbox Game Pass Ulti­mate, which gives access to the stream­ing ser­vice and the cat­a­log of free games across PC and con­sole. This ser­vice was already avail­able on Win­dows through a brows­er, but this is through the Xbox App.

Xbox Cloud Gam­ing on PC lets you stream games direct­ly to your PC with­out any addi­tion­al con­troller, expect a con­troller. A num­ber of the titles in the Xbox Game Pass library are sup­port­ed, and you if you began on con­sole, you can move to stream­ing and your progress will sync.

The ben­e­fits on stream­ing is that it does­n’t require a local down­load, which lets you get start­ed quick­ly. Plus, you don’t need a super high-end PC to run the games, since it’s not run­ning on your own hard­ware. How­ev­er, there are a cou­ple of draw­backs. It does require a decent inter­net speed that’s reli­able. Your ISP might also have data caps which would restrict you from play­ing for an extend­ed peri­od of time. 

Xbox Cloud Gam­ing is still in its beta stage, so testers should be aware that issues and odd­i­ties could spring up before it’s final­ized lat­er on. In oth­er Xbox news, Microsoft will be stream­ing dur­ing Gamescom this year, show­ing sev­er­al games through­out their presentation.