Xbox Cloud Gaming launches in Australia... tomorrow

Xbox have been on a massive push to open up the world of gaming, to anyone, no matter the device they choose to use, be it a home console or PC and that goal has just obtained another as Xbox have announced that Xbox Cloud Gaming is launching here in Australia, tomorrow on October 1st.

The service has been in preview here since November last year, with thousands of gamers testing out the service, across hundreds of games and all saying the same thing, it works. Perhaps the best news for gamers who want to access the service is that, if you have an existing Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership, then you are set to enjoy Cloud Gaming, something you can do via Windows PC’s, any supported Android phone or tablet and iOS phone or tablet, something of which almost any house will have a few of them.

You may find yourself asking the question, why would I want to game on my mobile phone screen, sure I can play a few quick mobile games on it while I am travelling, but at home, I have a large 4K screen. Kareem Choudhry, the Corporate Vice President of Cloud Gaming at Xbox explains it quite easily, it’s about putting the player first.

“Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person, every organisation on the planet to achieve more and at Xbox, that means putting the player at the centre of everything that we do. Our vision is to enable people to play the games they want, with the people they want, anywhere they want.”

So, while your TV might be the preferred way to play, there maybe times when the TV is taken over by someone else, leaving you without access to it and for that reason, your laptop or tablet may be the next best thing. The question to that of course is, if the game I was playing is on my console, why can’t I just stream it from there, why do I need the cloud?

Catherine Gluckstein, the Vice President and Head of Product at Project xCloud clarified why cloud gaming was important.

“We know today there are more than 3 billion gamers around the world and we think that by innovating the means to reach them, that we at Team Xbox can serve. In terms of cloud gaming, we view it really as additive to gamers who currently own a console today, it gives them a way to play when their main screen is busy, but equally we know there are people who have never owned our hardware and we know that through Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, they are able to access our games and play them on any of their devices.”

So now, if your TV is taken up by Bluey, you can still take part in Red Vs Blue matches in Halo, as long as you have access to a screen, but there are a few limitations to consider.

The first is that you need to ensure you have a download speed of at least 10mbps, that is enough for you too have two HD streams of Netflix content in your house at once, which most places will have. The second consideration is that in order to play most games, you will need to ensure you have a controller, for those on PC, any gamepad will do, if you have a modern Xbox controller, you can connect to it via Bluetooth, but your PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5 controller will also work.

On mobile devices Bluetooth controllers are required, but there are some games that have been modified to allow for touch controls, meaning as long as your screen can register a touch, you can play, Catherine explains what that means.

“Touch controls are part of our cloud aware technology, it is where we add native like controls for when games are played across mobile device, but for these games there is no controller required, so you can pick up your phone and start playing. We’ve honed this technology across more than 100 games across our portfolio, so really excited to offer that to Australian gamers.”

Of course, all of this sounds like technology of tomorrow, streaming Forza Horizon 4 or Destiny 2, to your mobile phone or PC, but what if you are on an older computer at home, web-based browsing is how many will access this, so will it work for them, I got the answer direct from Catherine herself.

“They absolutely can, you know browser has many attributes to it, that as we begun to developer the technology, we saw the opportunity. We support Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Apple’s Safari, not to say it won’t work in other browsers, but those are the ones that actively supporting and optimising for at this time. Obviously, the experience is just seamless and particular as you get into this term we call frictionless play, that you can just send a link to your friend, they can click it and come and start playing, it is absolutely awesome.

You are right the browser generally works across many, many devices and we internally are testing against 40+ different devices, to ensure that we can optimise it for the best. We think it offers great possibility and great ability to take the service across numerous devices, across a very scalable manner.”

So, day one - that is tomorrow, if you have Xbox Game Pass and any of the supported devices, you can jump in and just get your game on, sorry though if you are looking for PC games, they are not here yet. But what about the next steps, what does the future hold for this brand-new service? Especially in these very uncharted waters of Australian internet, Kareem didn’t want to commit to anything specific, which is pretty standard, but he did provide some insight.

“One thing that we’ve already announced, which is coming later this holiday, is that we are integrating cloud gaming directly into our consoles and enable users to try games, before they even have to download them onto their console, so while not a day two feature, it is something to come.”

That feature was something that was announced a while back, with Phil Spencer revealing those details, but what else is coming, Catherine added a little more.

“We obviously can’t pre-announce things that we are working on, but as a team we are working across the board on content, what we can light with developers, how about how we can delight people on devices, like ways that we can make our time to play, our frictionless play even more frictionless, so there are many things we are working on.”

While nothing concrete of course, it does provide some good guidance for the future of the service, as the service has the backing and the drive to make it something that sticks around long term.

Microsoft are committed to PC and mobile right now for cloud, with consoles to come later this year, but given that they are welcoming players in from almost every platform, I had to ask if PlayStation or Switch gamers would be given the chance to experience Xbox Cloud Gaming from their platform of choice.

“Well, you know that’s not really up to us, whether or not our Game Pass experience is permitted to be on those consoles,” Kareem Choudhry said. “But you know Phil Spencer has talked about this in the past, you can see what we are doing, what our vision is for Game Pass, what we are doing with our content and our ambition is to really bring that experience via the cloud, to any device that has a screen, a controller and a network connection. We’ve got a long road map of devices that we would like to get to, obviously many of them require partnerships and effort, we have our starting list and we feel pretty good about the billion devices that are covered so far, but we have more in the future as well.”

The question now remains, are you going to get into cloud gaming, I know I will be playing tomorrow morning.