18 PCWorld JANUARY 2021NEWS XBOX CLOUD GAMING
web browser,” Jerret West, the
corporate vice president
responsible for Microsoft Gaming,
wrote in a blog post (go.pcworld.
com/jwst) on December 9. “By
adding over a billion devices as a
path to playing in the Xbox
ecosystem, we envision a
seamless experience for all types
of players; whether it’s playing
Minecraft Dungeons with your
Xbox friends using touch controls
on an iPhone, or jumping into a
Destiny 2: Beyond Light strike on a
Surface Pro when you have a
break between meetings.”
While Xbox and PC games run on the PC
or console that’s right next to you, cloud
gaming runs on a remote device in the cloud.
Microsoft announced what it called Project
xCloud in late 2019, and even then the early
xCloud beta technology was impressive (go.
pcworld.com/xcbt). Because Microsoft uses
what is essentially a remote Xbox console to
stream an Xbox game to you, there’s a small
bit of latency, or lag, needed to process your
game’s inputs—but even “twitch” games
were surprisingly playable.
That small bit of input lag has traditionally
prompted PC players to turn up their nose at
cloud gaming, because minimizing lag and
maximizing frame rate has traditionally been
at the heart of so much of enthusiast PC
gaming. But with scalpers snatching up GPUsand consoles, cloud gaming has become a
viable alternative. Being able to play the
games remotely is better than not being able
to play the games at all.
What Microsoft hasn’t said, however, is
what the configuration of its remote servers
will include. Microsoft’s current Xbox cloud
gaming places an array of Xbox consoles in
the cloud, or at least the internal hardware.
Microsoft hasn’t said whether the PC version
will also essentially run on console hardware,
or on remote servers that use more
conventional PC technology. We’ve reached
out to Microsoft for answers, and we’ll update
this story if we hear back.
In the meantime, why wait? You can
already play Xbox cloud games in a PC-like
environment, on a Chromebook (go.pcworld.
com/xcbk).Cloud gaming runs on a remote device in the cloud.