Xbox Cloud Gaming Is a Wonder—Until I Tried Halo

"Xbox is winning me over with its Cloud Gaming with Xbox Game Pass service, but there are still some kinks it needs to work out." | Joanna Nelius, Gizmodo

[XBManiac]

No installs, no long loading, play on your laptop/desktop/tablet with Windows... connected to TV or monitor. When this happens, Xbox Game Pass Cloud Gaming will substitute my Xbox One for sure. Meanwhile, I can't justify the quality problems I suffer and mobile screen size for games designed to be played on big screen (or at least 27").

[lonewolf10]

Connect or cast your phone to TV?

[jukins]

Even more latency

[gamer7804]

you'd want to do hdmi when they finally get laptops and chrome books going.

[kneon]

@gamer7804

I don't know why hdmi ports on phones has become so rare. My old Blackberry Z10 and Z30 had it. I used to go on business trips and leave my laptop at home because I could just plug my phone into a projector for customer presentations. And then back at the hotel just plug my phone into the TV to watch movies

[roadkillers]

Good solution, but connectivity is worse. Bring this to Roku or TV partners.

[iplay1up2]

That defeats the purpose, don't you think?

[XBManiac]

Lag.

[jukins]

it'll happen eventually. Won't be soon but it will just need better infrastructure everywhwre

[Charlieboy333]

@ lonewolf10 Sorry, but doesn't sitting on your couch casting your phone/ tablet to your tv defeat the purpose? Might as well just play off console then for a MUCH better experience

[lonewolf10]

It does but what if you are on holiday/away from home?

[ufo8mycat]

Never understand how people can game on anything lower then at least 40” displays. Small screens just kills the immersion and wow factor in games. Especially with 4K gaming.

[crazyCoconuts]

Right, with a few exceptions where you might want to continue a game / check on something while in your house but away from your rig. And if portability is your thing, why rely on something that is notoriously NOT portable - a stable network connection? It's a conundrum that isn't going to be solved in the next few years imo. It's nice to have once in a while but not a mainstream replacement for anything

[anast]

So, it doesn't work?

[IRetrouk]

No it does, it has issues, but it works, really well on a 5ghz WiFi conection, not so well on a 2ghz one, 4g was bad but better now, not tried 5g so can't comment on that

[anast]

It seems for the time being that every thing has to line up perfectly for a complete experience. I might give it a go, If I can play in less than ideal conditions.

[IRetrouk]

Thats true, cant argue with you there, but if you have ultimate, you might as well give it a bash.

[Unspoken]

5G works much better than 4G.

[thejigisup]

It doesn't matter really if its a 2.4 or 5GHz connection. What matters is the saturation of the channel your router is on. For one person 2.4GHz network might be better. The 5GHz has a higher bandwidth but if you're at 30% saturation or higher it doesn't matter how fast your network speeds are. 5G cellular is ok but it's highly dependent on network utilization and congestion. I would recommend updating port forwarding settings for the device you are using on your router. I would suggest anyone who is interested in gaming online update their port forwarding or port triggering settings for a better experience.

[DarthZoolu]

I play on my phone over 5ghz wifi. It's amazing when it comes to RPGs and adventure games I didn't try any FPS because I don't even like playing them over wifi on any platform. Playing Wasteland, middle earth, nair, and no mans sky are ran great!

[talocaca]

I hope this will eventually work well. I have insanely fast internet and my experience with multiple streaming services has been mediocre at best.

When it works it's great, but easily 30% of the time it's just problems and frustration.

[CaptainObvious878]

Faster bandwidth speeds are never going to overcome the inherent latency in the infrastructure.

You can make the pipe as wide as you want, the water is still coming through at the same speed.

[DarthZoolu]

I have been playing a bunch of games on my phone on mediocre internet (5ghz wifi tho) with no issue. Of course I haven't been playing games I wouldn't play over Wi-Fi on console (FPS) but RPGs and over-the-shoulder adventure games work really well

[gold_drake]

yeh it was laggy as hell, but I guess that was to be expected. it works great sometimes but most of the time.. its just a mess

[RgR]

So do people get stuttering at times?
I have a good connection but with psnow I get stuttering during the day. Especially if anyone in the house is streaming anything. It isn't constant but happens pretty consistently about every 2-5 minutes. 3/s of stutter.

Is it the same with xbox cloud?
Been thinking of possibly using seeing how I can use it on pc.

[phoenixwing]

You say you have a good connection then proceed to prove you don't. Although when I used to have psnow I couldn't run anything unless nobody else was using the net.

[RgR]

Well...considering I'm fairly sure it isn't my connection that's the problem since I haven't tested enough I gave all the information I could. There was a noticeable improvement when I unchecked a box on the psnow settings. It used to freeze but the game would continue
...now it only stutters for 1.5 - 3 secs randomly. If it was a problem with my connection it would be constant and I would get a notification that my connection is bad...as I have been able to get when having several videos streaming off the same device where I'm using the app. This notification never pops up but it stutters anyways.

I'm fairly sure it's not my connection. It would give me a notification if it was.

Maybe actually add to the conversation instead of assuming the other is an idiot.

[Espangerish]

I read both your posts about stuttering with PS Now. So speaking as a professional network engineer I would say you have to bear in mind that when using home broadband to stream PSNow there is a difference between the connection from your home router to the Internet which is the bandwidth you are sold by your provider and the connection from your router to your gaming device (wired or wireless) which is local and has nothing to do with your ISP at all.

If your Internet is very high bandwidth and uncontended but you still get stutter then you likely have a local issue. The could be a lot of things but typically wireless interference from other people in your home or neighbors or even things like microwave ovens, wireless baby monitors and so on...which is far more pronounced when using 2.4Ghz.

If you are certain there are no sources of local interference the final cause would be something on your device itself. I experienced a lot of micro stutters when streaming PS4 to PC and eventually traced it back to a Windows process that would periodically call out for updates and disrupt the stream. Bad connection notifications show for consistently bad signal issues and dont react quickly enough to report small bursts of interference.

These sorts of issues are why streaming will take may years to give a comparable experience to having an actual console in your home for the vast majority of people. The technology is just too unreliable at the moment to give a 'perfect' experience.

Just some food for thought which you might find helpful.

[thejigisup]

Trying to explain saturation to customers and clients is such a chore sometimes. I love when I tell the older crowd that cordless phones and baby monitors create heavy interference they shout that they don't have a baby and then tell me to hold on bc their cordless phone is about to die.

[CaptainHenry916]

"Cloud Gaming with Xbox Game Pass has the same shortfalls as cloud gaming on any other platform. Network or server issues can cause lag and high latency, long loading times, and other things that just don’t happen when you play a game that’s been installed directly on your own PC or console."

I expected this. Cloud gaming has a long ways to go. It's just better playing games on a console or PC

[FanboySpotter]

The only game you need to stay away from is dead by daylight on xcloud. Play it natively not stream. Everything else runs great

[Kavorklestein]

Me and the GF play DBD with me on Xcloud and her on her xbox. We do good most of the time.
Skill checks can be kinda tricky sometimes, but overall it is quite solid.
.

[Gamerking82]

Bought a dongle that should let me play on all consoles with a PS4 pad . Hope it works as can’t get to grips with any other god awful pad .