Xbox gaming reviews

The all-you-can-eat game buffet has many of the same qualities that helped Netflix on its meteoric rise. But unlike Netflix, Xbox Cloud Gaming is entering a category already packed with heavyweight contenders. Still, services like Stadia still have it beat with their support for TVs via Chromecast, while Rainway is available on practically everything. That said, Microsoft has plans for the service to come to TVs sans Xbox via a forthcoming streaming stick, as well as direct integration within smart TVs.

This is pretty stunning functionality to leave off their marketing, and I can easily see this being one of the best use-cases there is for GamePass. Those lockers designate recently played, recently added, popular games, and touchscreen-optimized games. Within seconds, I could find what I was looking for and start a game. Near its original release, I counted games.

Now, there are available to stream on Cloud Gaming, out of a total available on Game Pass as a whole. There are some big-name games available like Doom Eternal, The Master Chief Collection, Halo 5, and Gears 5, and this list is growing impressively fast.

Still, much of the catalog is composed of older hits and indies, many of which are relatively unknown. In other words, Game Pass already suffers from segmentation. Months ago, I surmised that the libraries would eventually deviate, and it would end with the Cloud catalog having the worst selection of the three.

Sadly, I was right on the money. Still, the cloud offerings are nothing to scoff at, with a well-rounded list of games ranging from racing to horror.

Tapping a game in your recently played locker instantly launches it, while tapping a new game displays the product page, complete with screenshots, ESRB rating, and the ability to install it to your console or PC. Tapping the screen brings a small overlay in the top left-hand corner of the screen, with a microscopic ellipses and an Xbox button. The Xbox button brings up the familiar Guide menu, allowing you to see Friends, start a party, accept invitations, or view your achievements.

Tapping the ellipses brings up a Cloud Gaming-specific menu, allowing you to mute or unmute your microphone, supply feedback to Xbox, or quit the game. Swiping twice from the top or bottom of the screen also allows you to leave the game as well.

However, on Windows 10 browsers and Apple devices, the Xbox and ellipses icons are always on-screen. Any modern iOS or iPadOS device makes the experience even worse by also including the swipe bar on-screen at all times. On mobile, Xbox Cloud Gaming deals with voice chat in a pretty smart way, letting you chat with friends using the microphone already on your phone.

Unfortunately, without headphones, your friends and teammates will hear everything you hear, including their own voices. I found no way to turn off game audio while keeping my party chat on, which means the only practical way to play multiplayer games was with a headset. These games utilize on-screen touchpads that you can move, configure, and customize to whatever size phone you have. Doing so is a touch unintuitive, and the first time I loaded it up, several of the buttons were so far off the screen I had no idea they existed.

But once I figured it out, I was able to play a few games without many problems besides the obvious ones: no tactile feedback, my fingers covering half the screen, and the general slipperiness of touchscreen gaming.

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Your browser is not supported or outdated so some features of the site might not be available. Home Headphones Best Xbox One. Type Over-ear. Upscaling the resolution in the cloud not only helped transfer data faster, but it meant less input lag and smoother gameplay for the end-user.

The asterisk here is that the graphics still looked better while playing directly on the console in "real" 4K. Still, while there are a lot of factors at play here, and results may vary, it's certainly a vote of confidence for Xbox's new service when it comes to latency. Regardless of whether you have an Xbox One S or a shiny new Xbox Series X, you're going to get near-identical results playing the same game in the cloud. Xbox is reportedly adding upscaling to the Series X , however.

Just for fun, I decided to pit Banjo Kazooie in the cloud against Banjo Kazooie on the Nintendo 64, and the latency was similarly low: Banjo Kazooie over Xbox cloud gaming averaged 58ms, while it averaged 38ms on the N Again, 20ms or so difference is essentially not going to matter to the natural eye. If you have an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, you'll have access to hundreds of games you can play in the cloud. Low latency helps keep the gameplay in the cloud smooth, but rubberbanding when the camera whips around suddenly on its own , pixelation, and other kinds of video lag not related to latency can ruin the experience.

That's why a good internet connection is a must. I did see some minor video lag in the form of pixelation from time to time, but nothing that affected my ability to control my character or see where I was going on screen.

Stadia and Luna, which connect users to their cloud with a dongle rather than a full-blown console, have more lag issues in my experience. It would be nice to have the ability to adjust for poor network conditions. GeForce Now has this feature, allowing you to exchange latency for some pixelation if your bandwidth gets low, so you can keep playing through it.

Like Xbox's service, Luna and Stadia do not have this feature, so if you have poor network conditions, your game will lag a lot.

One major advantage of owning a new Xbox Series X is its ray-tracing capabilities, which can enhance compatible games with more lifelike lighting effects. However, unlike GeForce Now, there seems to be no option to enable ray tracing in the Xbox cloud at this time.

The ray tracing settings were missing from Control. Again, Xbox is still in the early stages of testing, so this could be something it enables down the road. But if Xbox allows its cloud users to play compatible games with ray tracing turned on, that would bring it one step closer to competing with Nvidia GeForce Now.

Xbox cloud gaming on an Xbox console has been a smooth experience so far. There have been some minor bumps, but those are expected for a product still in development.