What you need to know
- Xbox Cloud Gaming is a $15-per-month service bundled with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which lets you stream hundreds of games to mobile, PC, and the web.
- To get Xbox Cloud Gaming on a TV, you’ll currently need a connected Xbox console (which can run games natively anyway), or own an often-expensive Samsung TV.
- Today, Microsoft and Amazon announced a partnership to bring the Xbox Cloud Gaming app to Amazon Fire TV devices, vastly expanding the platform’s accessibility.
Xbox Cloud Gaming is a great option for those who don’t want an expensive video game console or gaming PC, offering hundreds of games for as little as $15 per month bundled with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Playable on Android devices, iOS over the web at xbox.com/play, Xbox consoles and Samsung TVs, Xbox Cloud Gaming streams Xbox games over the web, bypassing the need for powerful local hardware.
However, Xbox games are still designed for television screens and playing many cloud games on a phone can be a tricky affair, even with the best Xbox cloud gaming mobile controllers. Even if you don’t have an Xbox console, Xbox Cloud Games play best on a TV, but until now only Samsung TVs had that privilege. Samsung TVs with the necessary gaming hub feature can also be quite pricey, but what if there was a cheaper way?
Now you can take a $40 Amazon Fire TV Stick and plug it directly into any monitor, and get instant access to Xbox Cloud Gaming. That’s right, tech’s big cloud rivals have unexpectedly teamed up for Xbox Cloud Gaming, offering a native solution for the first time.
“The expansion of Xbox gaming to Fire TV devices gives players a new option to enjoy their favorite games on devices they already own,” said Ashley McKissick, who leads Xbox cloud gaming as Xbox CVP of Xbox experiences. “For those who don’t have an Xbox console, this provides an affordable and convenient way to get started. With Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, there’s something for every type of player. We look forward to more people joining the Xbox gaming community. “
“We want to make it easy for customers to access their favorite entertainment experiences with Fire TV,” said Daniel Rausch, vice president of Fire TV and Alexa. “We’re excited to work with Microsoft to bring the Xbox app to select Fire TV devices so customers can enjoy a huge library of high-quality games, allowing them to play great titles without the need for a console to have.”
Initially, Xbox Cloud Gaming will be available on the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K and Amazon Fire Stick 4K Max models, before potentially expanding to the cheaper HD Amazon Fire Stick Lite model later. The slightly more expensive Max model supports Wi-Fi 6E, which should give it an edge in connectivity over the 4K Wi-Fi 6 model, provided your home networking solution supports Wi-Fi 6 and 6E.
It appears that Xbox Cloud Gaming on Amazon Fire TV will also be available in every region where Xbox Cloud Gaming is currently available. Of course, you’ll also need a Bluetooth Xbox Series X|S controller to connect and play via your Fire TV.
An unlikely partnership in the cloud
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Amazon and Microsoft are often bitter rivals in the cloud when it comes to business services applications, even going so far as to sue each other to curry favor for lucrative government contracts. However, Amazon Gaming and Xbox seem a bit chiller. For example, Microsoft has partnered extensively with Amazon’s Twitch and Prime Gaming platforms, and Amazon is bringing its New World MMO to Xbox later this year. At the end of the day, it’s all just business, and this partnership will be mutually beneficial.
Amazon has its own emerging cloud gaming platform called Amazon Luna, and you’d think they’d want to distribute their own service on their own hardware. But cloud gaming is hard, and Microsoft already owns all the pieces of that puzzle since acquiring Activision-Blizzard, Bethesda and several other major global franchises. Microsoft has already started supporting Amazon Luna with its content, adding Fallout titles to the platform. Of course, Amazon has been instrumental in the Fallout franchise’s popularity exploding thanks to the Amazon Fallout TV show. So I’d say relations between the two companies are probably pretty good right now.
What’s more interesting is the fact that Microsoft still plans to grow Xbox Cloud Gaming. For a while, it felt like Microsoft might be turning away from it. In some regions, server capacity is still an issue, although Microsoft has been gradually working to restore the delta. NVIDIA GeForce Now has also given Microsoft incredibly strong competition in this area, as the technology is so good that it regularly beats Xbox Cloud Gaming in terms of latency and connection stability. Although I recently discovered that NVIDIA GeForce Now itself has had some queuing issues.
It was already somewhat possible to sideload Xbox Game Pass onto a Fire TV, but being able to download it directly from Amazon’s app store makes it available to a whole new audience. It’s also fortunate timing, as just yesterday my colleague Zac Bowden discovered a patent for Microsoft’s own canceled Fire TV-style Xbox Keystone.
But with Microsoft adding a whole new platform to the mix with Amazon Fire TV, I wonder how server capabilities might be affected. I also wonder what investments Microsoft is making to bring the latency of their experiences on par with their PC-first brethren. After all, Xbox Cloud Gaming servers are built using Xbox Series X hardware, which isn’t necessarily specified with video encoding in mind.
In any case, it’s great to see that Microsoft isn’t addressing this. However, I’d like more information on when exactly we’ll be able to bring our own games to Xbox Cloud Gaming.