The power of the Cloud was promised for years before anyone even knew what it meant. Well, most people still don’t necessarily know what it means. It’s just a fancy way of saying the information you’re interacting with is not on the machine you are accessing it from. The big wigs mainly wanted to use it for boring stuff, but the best usage for the Cloud was gaming. Several companies jumped at the opportunity to take gaming to the Cloud, but Xbox surprisingly nailed it the best, and it just keeps getting better.
In the beginning, Xbox announced plans for a beta of playing select Xbox titles through your phone; this was before Xbox’s massive hit of the subscription service, Game Pass. When the beta was first happening, all that was known about the plan was that the typical person could play Halo 5 on their phone with just a Microsoft account. The expected outcome from players was a laggy experience that would be less than desirable than playing the game on your console. They weren’t wrong. It was a laggy experience, but something else was just under the surface.
In recent years, Xbox Cloud has gotten steadier and more widely available, enabling you to access games like Forza Horizon 5 from your laptop, desktop computer, phone, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, all without downloading a thing. You can instantly play 100+ games from a browser of your choice, hence why Xbox Cloud is so popular. The games and the availability of these games on any device you own, even if you’ve never touched an Xbox console, is an enticing prospect.
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There’s one game, in particular, that’s popping off in Xbox Cloud Gaming, because of the title and the huge group of people who can now play it: Fortnite. Recently, it was announced that Fortnite can be played instantly on all machines that run the website xbox.com/play. Most importantly, those specifically with Apple phones can now play Fortnite on their devices.
Epic, the owner of Fortnite and Unreal Engine 5, previously had large fights and court battles with Apple over their large 30 percent portion of all in-game purchases made inside Fortnite on that platform. As a result, Epic left the App Store in August of 2020. Epic technically was in the wrong, considering they were essentially trying to open a backdoor to microtransactions that would be bought outside of the App Store, breaking the company conditions Apple had previously established and withheld. Microsoft had a spout with Apple as well over the Game Pass app being removed from the storefront since Apple had deemed it a storefront of games itself. So it’s only natural that Xbox and Epic would team up to solve this issue.
There’s a seemingly endless amount of devices that you can play Xbox Cloud on and a seemingly endless amount of games to play on those devices, thanks to their massive subscription-based library Game Pass. One of the most useful features for me is the ability to try games out instantly on my Series S before using up that precious SSD memory space. I can select any game I want and play without waiting an hour or so on a download. This means I can pick up and play a game with friends rather than spend 20 minutes figuring out what we both have currently downloaded. It also means taking chances on more games. There is nothing worse than downloading a 60-80 GB game just to bounce off of it in the first 30 minutes. Thankfully, with Xbox Cloud, I no longer worry about it and play more games now than ever before; the way it should be.
At the moment, if you wish to play Game Pass games on your TV at home, you will need an Xbox console made within the last eight years, which is any of the Xbox Ones or the current generation Xbox Series X and Series S. However, that will soon no longer be the only way to stream Xbox games to your TV. Microsoft just announced that in the next 12 months, they plan to release a Fire Stick-like dongle to be plugged into the back of your TV, giving you access to the entirety of Game Pass, making full use of the power of Cloud technology.
Xbox Cloud is all well and good, especially with a strong wired internet connection, but they aren’t the only ones using this technology. Other big names partake in this gaming form of the streaming wars like Google Stadia, Nvidia GeForce, Nintendo Switch Online, and PlayStation Now all exist but not without caveats. Stadia needs you to buy each game individually and subscribe to their service. Nintendo Switch Online requires an online subscription and a $200-$350 Nintendo Switch to play their backlog of antique games. But the only caveat that Xbox requires is a controller and $10 a month. Unfortunately, you cannot play Xbox Cloud games with a keyboard and mouse, its biggest letdown. Although, if you are playing on a mobile device, Xbox has an entire catalog of games that can use on-screen controls.
All in all, Xbox Cloud and Game Pass are the ultimate combinations and an absolute must-have. The ability to play Triple-A games on the go or at work right under your boss’s nose has always been my dream for mobile gaming, and Xbox Cloud certainly delivers. The huge catalog of games keeps getting bigger and better, especially now with Fortnite. I hope more free-to-play games get this kind of partnership with Xbox. I’d love to play Rocket League on my phone.
