the new weapon in streaming game warfare

While you look at the video game world on both Xbox One Series X and PS5, on the other side you find the exact opposite of the physical console: the game by streaming. The main representatives are both NVIDIA GeForce Now and the recently landed Google Stadia, rivals that Microsoft will have to face with xCloud, their proposal to play their proposals in mobile phones.

The Microsoft xCloud preview is now available for Android, so we can enjoy it as long as we have a compatible controller and we’ve been selected for the test, requiring prior registration a few months ago.

Prerequisites

Project Xcloud’s prerequisites are relatively affordable. We only need an Android with Android version 6.0 or higher, and Bluetooth from version 4.0. You don’t need the Xbox itself to playAlthough it is advisable to have your controllers to play with. However, if we don’t have them, we can always choose a compatible controller.

Secondly, Microsoft tells us that we need a network with at least 10 Mbps downstream and 4.75 Mbps upstream. In our case we played with a symmetrical fiber connection of 600 MBps, the local network of our home, a Samsung Galaxy S20 and a Google Pixel 3a XL.

It is required to play the Xbox Game Streaming application, which can be downloaded from Play Store completely free of charge. Once we’ve downloaded it, we need to sign in to our Microsoft account linked to the game library. In other words, enter the same account on your Xbox into the application.

Connect your Xbox controller to your mobile

The Xbox controller is one of the most adapted in mobile at all levels, starting with the connection. For connect the control to the mobile we need to have the Bluetooth active. Now we’ll press the connection button on the controller and the Xbox logo will flash for a few seconds.

The remote control connects like any other Bluetooth accessory. For Xbox we have a dedicated button for wireless connection, right at the top.

There you go. Once we’ve connected the Xbox controller to the mobile we can now play any delivery in the application. As expected, if we do not have the control connected, the application will send us a warning that we must make the connection.

The Xcloud catalogue

Xcloud’s catalogue is spectaculara real blow to the table even if it is a preliminary version. It includes both GamePass and non-GamePass games. Specifically, in this preview, we have a total of 97 games, an impressive number considering that we are still in the testing phase.

Forza Horizon 4, ARK:Survival Evolved, Destiny 2, Devil May Cry, Gears 5 or Just Cause 4 level games are some of the titles chosen for the Xcloud collection, being able to transmit them to the mobile in a simple way, as we’ll see later. At the moment we cannot broadcast games from the consoleThis function is reserved for later use.

1. A Plague Tale: Innocence
2. Absolve
3. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
4. Age of Wonders: Planetfall
5. ARK: Survival Evolved
6. Batman: The Enemy Within
7. Batman: The Telltale Series
8. Battle Chasers: Nightwar
9. Black Desert
10. Bleeding Edge
11. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
12. Bomber Crew
13. Borderlands 2
14. Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel
15. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
16. Children of Morta
17. Cities: Skylines – Xbox One Edition
18. Conan Exiles
19. Crackdown 3: Campaign
20. Darksiders III
21. DayZ
22. Dead by Daylight: Special Edition
23. Dead Island Definitive Edition
24. Descenders
25. Destiny 2
26. Devil May Cry 5
27. Dragon Age: Inquisition
28. DiRT Rally 2.0
29. F1 2019
30. Farming Simulator 17
31. Felix The Reaper
32. Fishing Sim World: Pro Tour
33. For The King
34. Forza Horizon 4
35. Forza Motorsport 7
36. Frostpunk: Console Edition
37. Gears 5
38. Gears of War: Ultimate Edition
39. GoNNER- Blueberry Edition
40. Halo 5: Guardians
41. Halo Wars 2
42. Halo: The Master Chief Collection
43. Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
44. Hello Neighbor
45. Hitman
46. Journey to the Savage Planet
47. Just Cause 4
48. Killer Instinct
49. Kingdom Come: Deliverance
50. Kingdom Two Crowns
51. The Sims 4
52. Madden NFL 20
53. Mark of the Ninja: Remastered
54. Moonlighter
55. MotoGP 19
56. MudRunner
57. Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden
58. Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition
59. Overcooked
60. Portal Knights
61. Puyo Puyo Champions
62. Rad
63. ReCore: Definitive Edition
64. Sea of Thieves
65. Shadow of the Tomb Raider
66. Shadow Warrior 2
67. Sid Meier’s Civilization VI
68. Sniper Elite 4
69. SoulCalibur VI
70. Sparklite
71. State of Decay 2
72. Subnautica
73. Superhot
74. Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition
75. Tekken 7
76. Tera
77. The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut
78. The Surge
79. The Wolf Among Us
80. theHunter: Call of the Wild
81. Totally Accurate Battle Simulator
82. Tracks – The Train Set Game
83. Train Sim World 2020
84. Unravel 2
85. Vampyr
86. War Thunder
87. Warhammer: Vermintide
88. Wasteland 2: Director’s Cut
89. World of Final Fantasy Maxima
90. World of Tanks: Mercenaries
91. World of Warships: Legends
92. World War Z
93. WRC 7 FIFA World Rally Championship
94. Wreckfest
95. WWE 2K20
96. Yakuza 0
97. Yoku’s Island Express

The application: how Xcloud works

Project xCloud uses AzureThe Microsoft cloud, from which we can stream games from both the initial collection and, in the future, from our own personal collection, to our device. After logging in we can access to the collection and run the games from it.

On the level of settings, we can still play little. We can enable connection from mobile networksYou can also send us comments with feedback.

But let’s play. Simply click on any game to open its file. It will show us a small description of the game, as well as the PEGI information about it. All we have to do is give play to start enjoying. If we have not connected a control, we will be prompted to do so, providing direct access to Bluetooth settings.

It takes a few seconds for the game to be broadcast…

…and another time to synchronize the data from the cloud for the first time. The other connections are faster, once the initial one is made.

For the time being, the games take about 20 seconds to transmit to the device. After this time, the game plays normally. In case we already have progress saved in the games, a process of synchronization of these will be carried out. This takes quite a while, in our case, synchronizing the start of Forza Horizon 4, has taken about five minutes to transfer all the data, connected to our 5Ghz WiFi network.

Once the synchronization is done (something not necessary if we don’t have saved data from previous games), we can start playing, and this is where the joys beginas, for a preview, it works pretty well in some games.

The graphic quality of Project Xcloud is excellent. During our tests we found no connection problems and, most importantly, the latency has been fantastic. Where we’ve encountered problems is on the sound level, with some pretty noticeable cuts in games like Forza Horizon 4. However, this doesn’t happen in all games. We also haven’t noticed any jumps in image quality or cuts in playback, all of this under WiFi.

Moving to 4G changes things. Here we have had problems of bitrate, which is transmitted in jumps to quality level. This brings back to the table how important connection quality is and the doubts that arise when using this type of service outside the homeThe network quality can vary quite a bit.

Needless to say, as the games are streamed, it doesn’t matter too much which cell phone you haveIf you’re using the phone, your phone’s hardware is not responsible for moving these graphics, so power takes a back seat.

Inside the game interface we can see in a very visual way the connection quality (it is marked on the right, with the icon of an antenna). If we don’t have it full, means that the connection is not perfect. This is a good indication of network quality at a glance. On the other hand, we can access the classic Xbox menu, to know our friends online, manage invitations, see our achievements and so on.

A 10 minute game to Forza Horizon has spent just over 500 megsSo if we want to use this service outside of WiFi networks, with our data connection, we have to take into account the impact it will have on the level of consumption. Similarly, it must be borne in mind that this type of service consumes much of the bandwidth.

A good first step from Microsoft

In short, we’re looking at a pretty competitive proposition to rival current streaming services. The main point here is to know what will happen with the catalogue, how GamePass will be integrated into it and how the console broadcast will work, which is not yet available.

Be that as it may, we liked the preview of Xcloud, allows you to enjoy first line delivery on any type of mobile and shows that Microsoft will be one of the big players in the streaming war.