FEBRUARY 2020 • TECH ADVISOR 81Some of the games available to stream on xCloudof cell towers, pings stretched to 90 milliseconds,
and loading times also climbed. Playing over Wi-Fi at
home reduced the latency down to the 40s and 50s in
milliseconds once again.
Sea of Thieves (SoT), a large multiplayer fantasy
pirate simulation, is somewhat slower-paced to begin
with, and I didn’t spend much time poking about its
gorgeously rendered seas. I will say that, perhaps
due to the slower pace, SoT felt a little laggier than I
remembered, playing on the Xbox console itself.
All of this sidesteps my problem with Project xCloud
at the moment, though, and that has nothing to do
with lag. It’s the challenge of compressing games that
could be, and usually are, played on large displays
in the family room, into a tiny fraction of that screen
space. Microsoft sells a phone clip that attaches to your
Xbox controller, though my smartphone car mount did
just fine. A phone can be balanced against everything
from a laptop screen to a couch cushion. Over time,FEBRUARY 2020 • TECH ADVISOR 81Some of the games available to stream on xCloud
of cell towers, pings stretched to 90 milliseconds,
and loading times also climbed. Playing over Wi-Fi at
home reduced the latency down to the 40s and 50s in
milliseconds once again.
Sea of Thieves (SoT), a large multiplayer fantasy
pirate simulation, is somewhat slower-paced to begin
with, and I didn’t spend much time poking about its
gorgeously rendered seas. I will say that, perhaps
due to the slower pace, SoT felt a little laggier than I
remembered, playing on the Xbox console itself.
All of this sidesteps my problem with Project xCloud
at the moment, though, and that has nothing to do
with lag. It’s the challenge of compressing games that
could be, and usually are, played on large displays
in the family room, into a tiny fraction of that screen
space. Microsoft sells a phone clip that attaches to your
Xbox controller, though my smartphone car mount did
just fine. A phone can be balanced against everything
from a laptop screen to a couch cushion. Over time,