I'll admit there's something to device-less game streaming, where $15 a month and a Bluetooth controller is all you need to hop online and play games with friends. If Microsoft can find a way to stream games out in 1440p or 4K without sacrificing latency, then this service would be an absolute slam dunk. Now that Microsoft is testing out 5-person family sharing for Game Pass Ultimate, this would eliminate the need to buy multiple consoles for a household, which is a pretty smart play from Microsoft. However, I can start to see the appeal of a world where you just sit down and play video games on your TV without worrying about upgrading consoles or tracking down an impossible-to-get GPU. The games themselves look pretty good and, more importantly, play like they are supposed to, so long as you're on a wired connection.Īt the end of the day, the quality of your experience with Xbox Cloud Gaming will always be determined by your internet connection. Navigating the Samsung Gaming Hub and booting up Xbox games is criminally easy. Even with my pretty good internet connection (891Mbps download speed), being wireless was too unreliable for serious competitive play.Īs someone who isn't the biggest game streaming advocate, I'm still pretty surprised at how well it works. From there, I could notice a significantly slower response from button press to screen action. I had a few instances where my connection got screwy, and my video and audio quality took a dip before latency got affected. Just for the hell of it, I've tried a few matches of Fortnite strictly on wireless to see if there is much difference in latency. Since the TV I received is a massive 55 inches, and I'm sitting less than 10 feet away from it, it's easy for me to spot the imperfections, whereas someone sitting on a couch 15 feet away in their living room might be more forgiving. Then again, the further you sit from the screen, the less noticeable it is. When playing Slay the Spire and Hades, I noticed a dip in visual quality whenever the connection was wonky, where it looked like the video was buffering for a couple of seconds. It looks pretty bad in motion in games like Inside, which is nothing but blacks and dark grays. Since I have been playing on a larger screen, the artifacting was more prominent, especially in darker areas. Xbox Cloud Streaming won't give you a 1:1 reproduction from the PC or even console experience in terms of fidelity, but I applaud it for trying. It's streaming, so there's no download or updating to worry about. Aside from that, you just click on the title, and it boots up in seconds. ![]() Everything is just lumped into very generic categories. For example, there are no horror or sports categories, which seems odd. ![]() I can't reiterate enough just how easy and seamless it is to get into a game, even though admittedly, the Xbox App could use better curation to organize its titles. Other than that, Xbox Cloud Gaming works as advertised. I've only experienced one or two instances where the performance dipped, which caused a swing and a miss during an at-bat. ![]() MLB The Show 22, which is my current yearly obsession, runs surprisingly well. It is shocking how little input lag there is. I also played a bit of As Dusk Falls, and it's been nice to sit back and make terrible life choices as a change of pace. I've been able to complete a couple of runs of Slay the Spire and Hades, and they've run as well as they do on console. Though precision weapons like snipers and pistols can feel a bit off in the heat of combat, especially in Halo, where even being delayed by a few milliseconds could cost you against better players.ĭespite that, the service shines in games that don't require millisecond-dependent gameplay, like strategy and adventures. In competitive shooters like Halo Infinite or Fortnite, I am pleasantly surprised to see that I can jump into matches and hold my own against players on PCs and consoles most of the time. Maybe I'm still traumatized from the early betas of GeForce Now or the current state of PlayStation Now who knows? I am impressed at how well most of the tested games perform. As far as latency is concerned, as long as you have a wired ethernet connection to your network, it is shocking how little input lag there is.
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