My Experience With X Cloud Beta As Compared to Similar Services

Originally sent this to one of the insider employee accounts but they also encouraged me to share it public with the main sub-redit so other employees and potential users can see it as well.

Wow... literally just wow.. I've been doing in home game streaming for years (Steam, Moonlight, etc.) so I'm a 100% believer in the power of taking your games off traditional interaction (PC with Monitor, console plugged into a tv) and making them portable on thin/light clients. I've definitely had my eye on many of the cloud options have done my fair share of playing with GeForce NOW (cloud/streamed), OnLive, PsNow, etc.

All of those things felt like gimmicks or a compromise, a "I would do this just because I have no other options available". I ended up binging the Halo 5 campaign over the weekend. Not only was it just seamless on my Galaxy Tab S4 but the experience never felt compromised. Sure, occasionally video/macro blocking break up or the screen refresh line, but when it comes to how the game felt? I don't know what you guys are doing different but it felt local. Whatever prioritization you are doing on inputs, it just never felt off step, to the point that xCloud felt "tighter" and more responsive than streaming a Ps4 Pro game over the network with PS4 Remote play (hardwired PS4 and wireless AC on client side). The 60fps nature of Halo 5 helps for sure but even than wow..

Stadia doesn't have me too excited (we don't need another closed platform but my best wishes to google on starting from scratch) but the idea of having xCloud available in addition to my extensive investment in PC/Win10 gaming and such? It's a very exciting prospect indeed. Either way, just wanted to share my feedback because I was legit impressed, to the point of actually being excited for where you guys take this.

I'm testing under the login (removed for public posting), also a member of the PC Game Pass beta, and while I skipped the Xbox One console generation, longtime platform fan going back to the OG. It's been really awesome engaging with the "xbox platform" outside of the console (the new game store with xbox tie in is fantastic) traditional space and looking forward to what the next 5-6 years looks like for these new exciting non conventional spaces!

For those who might want to know - Comcast Cable Internet, 250 speed, tested on Galaxy Tab S4 and a OnePlus 7 Pro both on 5ghz WiFi. Mainly used the S4 tablet. As for connection speeds I think anything over 60meg would be good. I have a mesh system and played around with setting artificial speed caps at a device level and really saw no degradation until getting under 80 and even then only slightly (i.e. an occasional macro block break down or screen refresh). It uses far less bandwidth but the more overhead it has the better I imagine. Again though, in my opinion if you can forgive an occasional macro blocking which is purely visual, the "feel" of the game was second *only* to local steam/moonlight streaming at 60fps. The xcloud doesn't provide stats but "going by feel" I would say it felt barely worse than my ideal local stream (18-24ms round trip per client stats) and definitely better than a sub optimal stream over 30ms where controller "feel" starts to fade and you get that "oh this now feels like a 30fps console experience on a tV without a good game mode". It does drink data like crazy but due to a household with youtube addicted children we already pay extra for "truly" unlimited data with comcast.

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