You can now play select Xbox games you own on your PC by streaming them through the Xbox PC app—if you're an Xbox Insider with a Game Pass Ultimate subscription.
This is a big deal because it includes some games which are not part of the Xbox Game Pass program, so it's the first time subscribers can stream these games via the Xbox PC app. And since you can also purchase games through the app, you don't even need to own an Xbox to buy and play these games.
So in a sense, this is Xbox taking another step down the path towards being a console-agnostic game streaming service à la Nvidia's GeForce Now. Xbox Game Pass is already one of the best cloud gaming services around, and this new feature makes it just a little bit better.
Of course, you currently have to sign up for the PC Gaming Preview portion of Microsoft's Xbox Insiders program to test it out.
The news comes courtesy of an Xbox Wire blog post published yesterday (July 15) in which Microsoft's Anu Reddy explains that Xbox Insiders who have joined the PC Gaming Preview and also subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate ($20/month) can now stream some Xbox games they own via the PC app in the 28 countries (including Australia, the U.S. and the U.K.) where Xbox Cloud Gaming is available.
It's basically an expanded version of the "stream your own game" feature Xbox introduced late last year, and since then the list of supported games has quintupled to over 250. The list of supported games is available to peruse on Xbox's website, and while it doesn't include many Xbox exclusives (no Blinx 2 or Lost Odyssey, for example) it does include Xbox 360 games like Saint's Row 2.
And to be clear, you're not actually streaming anything from your Xbox when using this feature. The "stream your own game" branding can be misleading, because when you stream one of these games via the Xbox PC app you're actually streaming it via xCloud directly from Microsoft's servers, so your Xbox isn't necessary.
This can be confusing because the Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X also have a Remote Play feature that lets you stream games you own directly from your console to your PC, TV, smartphone, tablet or Meta Quest headset using your Xbox.
None of this is hugely surprising since we've long known (thanks in part to reporting from The Verge ) that Microsoft is pushing to expand its game streaming capabilities as part of something internally branded Project Lapland. The company has been working to beef up its technical capabilities and get developers and publishers to sign off on allowing their games to be streamed remotely, which is presumably why the list of supported games has been steadily growing since last November.
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