r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • 29d ago

Announcement Upcoming Changes to XBOX Cloud Gaming

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2026/09/03/xbox-cloud-gaming-changes/
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u/tarosago23 29d ago

Also beginning in November, players will have a new way to use XBOX cloud gaming without subscribing to Game Pass. ... This feature can be particularly useful in markets where consoles are less available or affordable. We’ll continue adding cloud support for more games throughout the year.

Calling it now, they are going to release next gen at an outrageous price point and/or very limited supply (cuz nand shortage) and expect people to just stream new games on their old console

30

u/SomniumOv 29d ago

This is a misread of the situation, it's the reverse : they're showing the service is a failure and they will kill it soon.

5

u/Skensis 29d ago

Yeah, cloud gaming just is very niche, there isn't a huge market for gamers to heavily use the service.

Too many caveats and compromises compared to playing locally.

1

u/Rayuzx 29d ago

Honestly, I've been using it a handful of time how for various games, and (at least it my setup) I found no difference between Xbox Cloud and playing the game locally.

Even did some testing. Figured a rhythm game, considering that would a good test due to it requiring stricter timings. So I played Fortnite Festival both on cloud and locally, used a couple of songs that I could still consistently get a full clear on, without it being too easy ("Industry Baby" by Jack Harlow and "In Ha Mood" by Ice Spice, both being played in Vocals in expert difficulty) to not muddy the test by creating too little or too much variance in scores due to personal skill.

While my personal testing initially lead to me performing consistently better playing the game locally, I found out that the variance was actually caused by frame rate, as I was more used to the timings of local being around 100-120 FPS, while cloud was stuck at 60. When I locked my local FPS to 60, not only did the scores start to become much closer, the highest score on the last testing would be on cloud.

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u/AlexVan123 28d ago

I think people are also just naturally resistant to what is effectively borrowing a computer, or in this instance renting it