Xbox gamers are loving cloud streaming on consoles – here’s why
Xbox console owners are spending 45% more hours cloud streaming games rather than downloading. And one word explains why – convenience
Microsoft’s drive to get more people streaming their Xbox games over the cloud appears to be paying off. In a blog post on Wednesday, the company says cloud gaming hours on consoles has risen a whopping 45% in the last twelve months.
The console stats are significant given Xbox owners have plenty other options to play their games. Either the full download of the game from Game Pass/Xbox Store or by dropping in the physical copy of the game, which still works on the Xbox Series X.
In that time, Microsoft has also made it possible for users to stream the games they own, including the recent edition of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. It goes to show that gamers are embracing the convenience of simply hitting ‘Play’ and waiting for the server to open up, rather than going to the trouble of downloading the game in full.
This is despite the streaming experience maxing out at 1440p and 60fps (a recent increase on the 1080p) limit. So convenience is topping the potential for 4K 120fps quality for some gamers on their consoles.
The Game Pass-exclusive feature has also seen an increase of 24% on other devices. The lower increase makes perfect sense, given smart TV apps and browser-based gaming options are cloud streaming-exclusive for Game Pass subscribers.
The blog post, which points out cloud gaming is now available in over 30 countries, comes after Microsoft announced users would be able to select their preferred streaming quality in oder to save on data consumption. 1440p quality gaming, for example, drinks down 14GB of data per hour while settling for 720p will only cost users 5GB per hour.
“User Selected Resolution allows players to manually choose their preferred streaming resolution before launching a game,” Microsoft said. “This ensures players can tailor their subscription to match how and where they play.”
Chris Smith
