It took a while, but Xbox’s xCloud streaming service has hit Australia today in its preview phase. It’s only available to those that have Android devices *cries in iPhone* and so far, the first impressions are really positive. If you haven’t already registered, you can do so here.
As a reminder, this is streaming from the cloud (rather than a console) and at launch, there’s 25 games that you can play including heavy hitters such as Halo: Master Chief Collection and Forza Horizon 4.
Our very own Ewan Roxburgh said whilst playing Forza Horizon 4 “Wow, this is impressive. There’s definitely some noticeable input lag, but it’s still very playable”.
Another said: “Just got my invite to game streaming. Pretty good so far. Seamlessly picking up from my MCC save that I was playing on my Series X last night.”
On Twitter, Aussie journos and gamers were eagerly testing the first cloud gaming service to hit Australia with fairly positive results.
Obviously, performance is going to differ based on your connection type, but so far, it seems positive. I had completely forgotten about the fact that you’d be able to continue your game thanks to Xbox’s great cloud save implementation. That’s a complete gamechanger.
It’ll be interesting to watch xCloud grow over time, and see how it changes and improves over the preview phase and beyond.