Xbox Cloud Gaming has officially launched for consoles

Microsoft has officially launched Xbox Cloud Gaming for consoles.

It’s now available for Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One owners with an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription in 25 regions with Brazil to follow.

“This capability will initially roll out with our November release to a subset of Xbox gamers and scale to all gamers in supported markets over the coming weeks,” said Xbox Cloud Gaming head Catherine Gluckstein.

Xbox Cloud Gaming allows players to access Xbox Game Pass titles without downloading them and jump into multiplayer sessions with friends for games that aren’t installed on the physical console.

It also enables Xbox One owners to play selected Xbox Series X/S games like Recompile, The Medium and The Riftbreaker via cloud gaming.

“We will also continue to support this capability and expand our cloud game library to include more next gen games like Microsoft Flight Simulator in early 2022,” said Gluckstein.

Xbox Cloud Gaming for consoles launches as part of Xbox’s November update, which also includes new accessibility and controller features, and targets hardware shutdown issues when playing certain games, among other features.

Microsoft already offers Xbox Cloud Gaming on mobile devices and PC. And in June, the company said it is planning to bring Xbox Cloud Gaming to internet-connected TVs in a move that will let players access services like Game Pass with no extra hardware required except a controller.

Related

November’s Xbox update includes new accessibility and controller features

It also targets console shutdown issues when playing certain games

November’s new Xbox Game Pass titles include Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – The Definitive Edition, It Takes Two, Forza Horizon 5 and Evil Genius 2.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer claimed this week that Game Pass is “very, very sustainable right now as it sits and it continues to grow”, despite the service attracting fewer new subscribers last year than Microsoft had targeted.

Sarah Bond, Microsoft’s head of gaming ecosystems, also revealed this week that Xbox Game Pass was originally envisioned as a rental service.