If there’s one thing many Xbox fans have been waiting for, it’s bringing xCloud, or as Microsoft calls it Cloud Gaming, to the computer. This has been a strange omission in the Cloud Gaming story so far, but that would change in the near future.
Back in December, Microsoft announced that iOS and PC would be added to the xCloud experience in the spring of 2021, and now we’re starting to see some progress towards that goal.
Over the past few weeks, Microsoft ‘Cloud Gaming’ has expanded to a large group of users within Microsoft via a browser. It is by far the largest group of cloud games beta testers for the PC iteration of the service, and it is one of the last steps before it is presented publicly in a preview state.
For those currently testing the service within Microsoft, they report that the experience is a bit buggy at the moment, but that’s to be expected. The streaming service also currently only works with Chrome and Edge, Firefox and Safari users will need to change their browsing habits if they want to use the service.
One thing I’m not entirely sure at the moment is whether the standalone app for Cloud Gaming will exist when the service makes its public debut. Late last year, there was a leaked app that allowed you to play xCloud on your computer, but the application experience may disappear in favor of the browser solution.
Microsoft may still choose to offer both solutions, the ‘app’ may after all be just a web cover, but the essence is that Cloud Gaming is moving forward on the computer at a rate that enables Microsoft to make its stated goal of a spring release. That being said, the iOS iteration of the service does not seem as far into the testing phases as the PC, but the solution is a bit more complicated thanks to Apple’s store policy.
xCloud was initially launched on Android and those users can stream games today. But with billions more users on a PC and iOS, the Xbox platforms will be open to a much larger gaming audience by enabling these platforms to stream the games.
Tagged with Cloud Gaming, Microsoft, xCloud