r/gaming • u/Force_Hammer • 17h ago

Microsoft to impose time limits on Xbox cloud gaming subscribers as costs continue to climb

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/03/microsoft-xbox-game-pass-cloud-limits.html
11.2k Upvotes

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1.8k

u/VV1NST0N 17h ago

Every cloud gaming service I have used won't work for me. The input latency is too high even on a fiber connection.

801

u/rand0mtaskk 16h ago

This has been my experience too. It’s just a terrible experience on nearly all games.

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u/Maxcharged 16h ago

The lagging does look really funny though, because it will fast forward through whatever happened while you were lagging to catch back up.

NHL started looking like a Benny Hill chase scene. And the commentators sounded like chipmunks.

13

u/gaffythegrey 15h ago

It used to just screen tear, then skip ahead when that happened to me. Granted, I dropped Xbox back when they hiked prices, so I'm not sure if something has changed.

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u/Gandolfthewhite182 14h ago

I didn’t even have this problem on steamdeck. It worked nearly perfectly but I cancelled when they raised the price 35% . So I haven’t used it in awhile.

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u/gaffythegrey 11h ago

Wizards think alike, I guess.

0

u/SomewhereLatter4337 12h ago

Pretty sure the poster is thinking of online gaming because it definitely has never did this catch up thing for me. Maybe he has really bad internet or something though.

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u/Imaginary-Plate1732 13h ago

🤣🤣🤣🤣 you must be old as hell. Just like me

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u/EdgeBandanna 14h ago

This is what I've been saying about cloud gaming forever. Even if the latency is somehow cleaned up, it will only work for people on top end connections, ultimately limiting how mich of an impact it will have in the space.

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u/rand0mtaskk 13h ago

Yeah I mean I’m on gigabit and it’s shit still. 🤷🏻‍♂️

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u/huntingwhale 6h ago

Yup, I pretty much only use it for turn based rpgs.

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u/Shadowrak 4h ago

There is a limiting factor called the speed of light. You can try to hide latency when you are there, but nothing beats shorter distance information travels.

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u/hogswristwatch 2h ago

I play constantly on weak hotel WiFi or phones 5g. Works great.

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u/jessicaax6 15h ago

classics like Stronghold Crusader were always playable for me and I dont even have fiber. but anything above that has been miserable yes

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u/Noselessmonk 11h ago

You have to literally be in the same city to have reasonable latency for streaming a game. And even then, some games you will still feel it(FPS games must be awful over streaming).

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u/LooneyWabbit1 5h ago

Fps games aren't playable even over local fully wired streaming lol. I tried. It's nauseating having the mouse lag behind even the tiniest amount.

I ended up just running a 10m HDMI cable...

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u/alphazero925 14h ago

It was great for playing Fable 2 without needing to buy a 360 and a disc copy, but I can't imagine trying to use it for anything less casual than that

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u/rand0mtaskk 14h ago

I tried to play a couple different games, newer and older, but couldn’t get anything to feel good. Some were definitely better than others, but I just got tired of dealing with it.

Only reason I keep ultimate now is because my kids play on our Xbox one while I’m on PC.

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u/Archkingz 11h ago edited 6h ago

I was gonna say something like this. Its been pretty bad for me on all games i tried, except for Crusader Kings 3. But its easy to see how that title gets by with it.

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u/rand0mtaskk 11h ago

Yeah any kind of turn based would be fine I’m sure. Anything with action though wasn’t great.

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u/SippinOnHatorade 9h ago

Turn-based is the only use-case and even then it’s sub optimal

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u/Incorect_Speling 3h ago

It's probably fine for games like slay the spire etc. Which need a potato to run and you could play natively on your phone.

I cannot understand the appeal of cloud gaming if they can't fix the latency issue (and I'm not sure that's realistic if even fiber isn't cutting it), even the occasional gamer wouldn't want terrible input lag, or being limited to 15h/month

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u/EnronCPA 14h ago

Been using GFN for 3 years and it works flawlessly. 15ms ping

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u/rand0mtaskk 13h ago

Ok. 👍🏻

-3

u/EnronCPA 13h ago

Ok 👌

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u/avelineaurora 15h ago

I have had 0 issues playing FPSes lag free on Geforce Now, I have no idea what y'all's problem is.

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u/Avalarr 15h ago

Even if this wasn't a bot comment, not noticing the additional latency of STREAMED gaming in an FPS title is certainly bot behavior.

-7

u/avelineaurora 14h ago

Why the fuck do you think I'm a bot lmao. Clown-ass response.

I don't know what to tell you. I'm by no means a competitive player so yeah if you're sweaty you'd probably notice. But I have no issue playing at my moderately-not-terrible skill level on cloud gaming. No one's seemingly shooting me from out of nowhere, no one's rubber banding, bullets hit where it looks like they're supposed to hit. I don't really have any issue with action games either, though obviously that requires less than an FPS.

FWIW, this is a test to GFN servers right now, so it's pretty negligible even when combined with the additional latency from them to whatever game.

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u/rand0mtaskk 14h ago

Ok. 👍🏻

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u/Fluffy_Charity_2732 16h ago

Which is funny because streaming direct from my own pc via steam link is 50x less latency than cloud dogshit. And that’s when I’m on the road via WiFi. And tried all the premium cloud providers from my fiber at home 

Cloud gaming is bullshit on purpose. They want to see how shit they can keep the service in order to make it “better” when they need to look like they are improving it

Anyone using cloud gaming right now is dumber than shit

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u/082426grateful 15h ago

I remember when publicly traded firms could just say the word “cloud” and their stock price would surge.

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u/REDDITATO_ 13h ago

See "AI" now. Round and round we go.

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u/ThatOneComrade 11h ago

Can the next investor buzzword come around and pop the bubble please.

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u/vkevlar 13h ago

they're trying to replace that with "AI", it doesn't seem to be having the same effect, fortunately

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u/EmmatheBest 12h ago

No, I don't...because Square Enix's stock has kinda not been doing anything for awhile. :p

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u/flyinhighaskmeY 10h ago

lol...that isn't how it works. publicly traded firms don't control their stock price. Wall St. actors do.

The price isn't surging because they said "cloud". That's just how its being explained to people who don't understand how the market works. Its the same with Ai. Those prices are moving where they are because someone needs them to move where they are. The news stories are just bullshit cover.

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u/yung_dogie 16h ago

Yeah streaming from my home PC via Sunshine/Moonlight or Steam Link is noticeable but far more playable than when I tried a friend's cloud gaming subscription on his home internet connection. Plus when I do personal streaming I'm usually on phone hotspot -> laptop (of course stability of the connection was an issue but that undoubtedly would've been the case with the same setup for cloud gaming services)

2

u/waddlesticks PC 12h ago

I have the opposite problem.

Steam link is absolutely trash for me even locally, whilst sunshine/moonlight combo or cloud gaming in gamepass is low latency without hiccups.

I had to change ISP provider though for gamepass cloud to have good latency though.

2

u/Rhysati 12h ago

I have the exact same experience. Cloud gaming is laggy, input is delayed, and you get kicked if you idle for like 5 mins.

But I stream from my PC to my friends place via WiFi connected to my handheld and I can play Spider-Man. It feels like I'm actually at my PC.

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u/vinyljunkie1245 15h ago

I guess I'm dumber than shit then because I used it all the time and I have no issues whatsoever with latency or lag. I can't tell the difference between playing in the cloud via gamepass and the game installed on my Xbox. I have a fibre connection though.

It saves me having to move games back and forth from internal and external storage if I feel like playing something different now games are so big storage wise and MS giving such small internal storage.

I know I don't own those games but I'm fine with that. I buy the games I want but at the moment the ones I want are on Gamepass and I don't pay for that as I get it through Microsoft Rewards by getting gift cards. I easily have enough to keep the top tier free. I've only paid for about 6 months of Gamepass since it started.

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u/JuanRunJunior 14h ago

It’s amazing how easily people can call someone stupid as shit for having a different opinion isn’t it? I have the same experience streaming PC games so I must be dumb as shit too.

My favorite part with these people? “hAvE FUN NoT OwNiNg yOuR GaMes” they’ll say, while playing on Steam, a digital storefront, that doesn’t sell physical copies, that allows third party launchers so your games require them, and then they’ll start insulting you. I have paid games on Steam that don’t work if the launcher encounters an error, and I’m sure they do too, but we are the dumb people in their eyes. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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u/the_original_kermit 14h ago

Anyone that equates physical games with ownership basically gets a downvote for me.

It was never ownership. It’s always been a license, and I don’t expect a future where it isn’t that way.

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u/[deleted] 14h ago

[deleted]

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u/MaltySines 14h ago

30fps has been standard on console for most games a decade. Yeah it's not gonna be enough for the hardcore, but most of the gaming audience is fine with it like how most people don't care that 24fps isn't the optimal movie framerate. It just feels natural because it's been standard for so long

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u/exposarts 15h ago

are the people that use cloud gaming cause they can't afford a high end gaming pc also dumb? Not every country is considered a first world country

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u/zgillet 14h ago

Those third-world countries are getting fiber now?

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u/Brad1895 14h ago edited 13h ago

It's almost* the worst option of all. Period

You pay a subscription for access to a gaming system you have zero control over. If Microsoft decides the business model isn't profitable after a few years, you're out of luck.

You need solid internet and to be close to the data center running that machine. If you don't, you're going to have a really bad time trying to play anything but minesweeper.

You don't need a high end gaming PC. You don't even need a midrange pc. The number of games you can play on an old PC or a build from mid 2010's hardware will last you a long, long time. The price of those parts are going to be cheaper than the cost of a subscription, and you get to actually own the hardware.

  • The only reason I can see someone doing this is if they want to try the hobby before dropping hundreds (or sometimes) thousands on a setup.

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u/the_original_kermit 13h ago

Your last sentence basically explains it and contradicts your first.

If you had $100 to spend for the rest of the year, you’re going to be better off with cloud gaming.

I don’t like it, and I would never do it. But it’s somewhat ignorant to ignore that if you consider cost per hour of gaming, it’s near the top of the charts in the low hours range.

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u/Brad1895 13h ago

Asterisk added.

I don't think it's that cheap in terms of cost per hour though. If you want to play at all any given month, you have to pay the subscription cost. You don't pay on months you'd don't play provided you're on top of canceling the payment for a given month. I don't see how that's much better than owning the hardware outright if you intend to play for low hours over the course of years.

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u/the_original_kermit 9h ago

Yeah, but you can basically play for like $400 a year.

Let’s say you game 10 hours a weeks. That’s about $0.77 an hour.

Now you have a hard core gamer. They spend $4000 on their machine. They would need to game 100 hours a week to get the same dollar per hour.

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u/exposarts 12h ago

You cannot play games like cyberpunk 2077 with path tracing or rtx on an old pc lol.. at least with good performance. But like I said, based on where you live, affording a high end pc isn't so easy. Ethernet is very cheap, but what does matter is whether you are close to a data center as that dictates your latency. Some get to have 5-15ms latency which is decent/good, others have to deal with 60ms+ latency because they are far from a data server which is unplayable. So when it comes down to some casual gamers who cannot afford a high end setup, they would rather pay the $10-20 fee to play single player games with maxed out graphics and 120 fps on the higher tier and have a good experience assuming they use ethernet and are close to a data server.... That is a far better bargain for most adults than say netflix/spotify subscriptions, it costs almost nothing and they get a lot in return.. But if you can afford a high end pc setup, that will ofc always be better as you get mod support for all games, no limitations to library, no time limits, and native latency is always better as we all know

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u/GPTforGood 12h ago

Literally nobody was claiming you could run cyberpunk with raytracing on an old PC lol you're arguing with clouds.

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u/exposarts 12h ago

You missed the point entirely, and just argue with semantics, boring.. He said, "You don't need a high end gaming PC. You don't even need a midrange pc. " I am saying an example of why someone would want access to a high end system/rig.. An old gaming pc isn't enough for many people

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u/Brad1895 11h ago

At no point did I suggest playing cyberpunk with raytracing of all things. You even made two huge assumptions, being physically close to the site and having low latency internet on top of that. Those two were part of my original argument. Not everyone heck, most users will not fall into those categories.

I hate to use the term "living within your means," but something similar applies here. There are tons of games that have come out over the years that can run on just about anything. You do not need a top of the line pc to enjoy the hobby unless you're trying to push the settings to max on every new release. Many of us are more than happy to enjoy the lifetime of content already out there.

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u/exposarts 5h ago

"being physically close to the site and having low latency internet on top of that" I did not say those were requirements, more so that is what you need for a great/close to nativelike experience.. I'm sure people in non first world countries wouldn't mind playing modern games with great graphics/performance with around 50ms or even more. Now if you are playing a competitive fps game, that would be unplayable ofc..

You do absolutely need a decent pc(at least $1500) to enjoy most modern titles at decent frame rates, because many devs apparently think that optimization shouldn't be a priority.. Think the new monster hunter title, stalker 2, dragons dogma 2, etc. But of course, there are many older games that aren't as demanding, in that case a low-mid end pc will work decently. I'm mostly talking about gfnow or boosteroid, people are willing to pay $10-20 for these services to play modern games with good performance, that don't run well on their current machines and aren't able to afford a good rig.

0

u/MaltySines 14h ago

I only play games once. It's fine if they take shit out of the rotation that I've played because I'm never booting it up again once I've finished. I pay $20 and can beat 2-3 modern AAA games that I'm interested in in a month. If there's nothing I want to play I just unsub

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u/Brad1895 14h ago

Hold up, are you talking about game pass or cloud gaming? Because I don't have beef with game pass aside from Microsoft fucking up the pricing.

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u/JuanRunJunior 14h ago

I’ve been using GeForce now on my Mac mini for a few months with no perceptible lag on a fiber connection. I’m not great at BF6 and I have no idea what you’re talking about. It works perfectly fine on every game in multiple genres I’ve tried. Maybe Xbox cloud sucks, but the blanket statement that it’s dogshit, shit service and doesn’t work isn’t incorrect. I won’t be using it for long, once I tire of BF6, but saying PC cloud gaming is dogshit isn’t even remotely true.

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u/puffbro 6h ago

Yea a lot of people didn’t realise bandwidth is only part of the story, server’s location matters a lot more on what latency one would get from streaming.

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u/Smokester121 15h ago

I gotta make sure I can do it on the road. Gotta set it up.

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u/RetPala 12h ago

There is no "better" or "improving it"

This is a race to the bottom. The end game of a business is just fanning out on the streets to lasso "customers" to convert their biomass into fuel like some Mad Max/Matrix combo

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u/GlastoKhole 11h ago

I have a gigabit internet connection. I download 25gb games in a handful of minutes at most. Even with everyone on my network in the family when I check I’m pulling in no less than 600mb a second at peak times. Yet when I loaded cloud gaming on my Xbox last week the menu for the game was lagging hard and looked like it was 480p. I gave it a few minutes and loaded the first mission up and just noped out. Why the fuck are they pushing this shite? Nobody and I mean nobody will use it except maybe the odd boomer. people who game typically have a hard on for high fidelity or super fast response times down to milliseconds. It’s half the reason people push for like 120 frames. But this shit. Nobody will get behind it

1

u/LooneyWabbit1 5h ago

I agree with everything you said except one.

"Nobody will use it except the odd boomer"

Nah. Tons of people are completely blind and disconnected from their hands. Look at all the pushback every time a game releases with shit optimisation. People will be running 78 fps at 4x frame gen upscaled from 480p and claim the game looks and runs great.

People are already running around with 60ms additional input lag playing locally and apparently seem to have no idea. Tons of morons jumped to use and defend Stadia when that was a thing. This'll probably go over just fine tbh 😔

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u/ennuiinmotion 10h ago

It's all a race to see how cheap you can provide a product or service and still keep customers. Making things better is never in the calculations.

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u/Mofaklar 9h ago

Yeah, I dont think its necessarily latency. As in, network specific lag. It should be possible to keep this to about +20ms Which shouldn't really cause to much of an issue.

I think they are screwing people with hardware allocations/platform.

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u/Trrollmann 4h ago

On purpose? I finished Halo Infinite on highest difficulty on cloud gaming. Latency was an issue, annoying for sure, but not bad enough that I'd buy the game.

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u/hogswristwatch 2h ago

Huh, works great for me. You sound fat.

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u/MaltySines 14h ago

The latency is fine in good network conditions if you're close to the server. I can beat Doom Eternal on ultra violence and it doesn't feel any worse than console. It's not like a high end pc but for people used to console it's gonna be fine (again if you're lucky enough to be closer to a server)

0

u/9966 14h ago

Stadia worked great. Very low lag, instant boot. Shame it died.

-12

u/Admirable_Zombie5245 16h ago

I have access to a cloud 5080 and use it to play on my OLED TV at 4k 120fps with ULTRA RTX setting, it’s amazing for just $20/mo

Feels native, no latency. But hey keep enjoying your probably 4060ti card

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u/LR0989 16h ago

Enjoy no mods, a fraction of the games, and no ownership? Lmao and just wait til the time limits / price increases start rolling in

1

u/Narfi1 16h ago

I haven’t used it in over a decade but Shadow PC just gives you a windows desktop, you can do anything you’d do on your own windows PC

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u/ubelgooble 16h ago

name checks out.

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u/Fluffy_Charity_2732 15h ago

Don’t need all that for your Roblox, kid. Your mom know you use her card?

-1

u/Long-Broccoli-3363 13h ago

My kid's dad is a technology mennonite, uses a flip phone, minimal stuff etc because of his religion.

I got him a logitech gcloud, and set up tailscale on it back to our house, apollo/artemis, and boom, he can play like he's at home, he cant even notice the difference.

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u/HuntingForSanity 16h ago

That’s interesting to me. I do not have fiber, and use GeForce now to play certain games that my laptop absolutely cannot handle.

And it feels just like playing native to me. Unless something is going on with my internet that day.

Gamepass streaming sucks in comparison though. That is laggy as all hell.

2

u/DeathCab4Cutie 12h ago

I see so many conflicting reports, and I don’t know who to believe. Is it varied setups creating different results, or just people’s subjective opinions differing from one person to another? Maybe “feels like native” to you wouldn’t feel the same to someone else, or maybe the network connection you have is just more reliable/low latency than some with fiber. Guess I have to demo it at some point to know for sure. Sunshine/Moonlight on my home network feels a bit behind, but it’s hardly noticeable in casual games. I wonder how different it would be for cloud.

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u/iMedium 11h ago

Linus did testing on it and it's fairly close. It works well for harder to run single player games. Results obviously vary not only based on speed, but your proximity to their servers, proximity to your local node, etc.

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u/DoubleBassPlease 9h ago

It's $10.

I played Destiny 2 on airport wireless at over 60fps. I couldn't sense input lag. I'm no "competitive gamer" but I know what input lag feels like.

It's my go-to service for gaming on travel on my Steam Deck.

Only real negative is giving money to NVIDIA.

1

u/MagentaHawk 5h ago

I can actually mention this in a few settings. I've played it on 3 computers (1 good desktop, 1 old desktop, 1 2020 chromebook) on direct fiber and wifi both in Oregon and Idaho.

For the vast majority of the time it felt native to me, honestly. There were times of frustrating latency, but those would only occur when the internet was being interrupted to a point that it wouldn't be able to consistently stream 1080P on Youtube. 95% of the time it has felt native.

Very helpful in delaying an upgrade to my system. I mostly play indie games it my computers are fine, but newer stuff like Zcom? My GPU literally can't even speak the right language, let alone have the hardware. $10 let's me play some fancy new games on my shitty card.

-1

u/NutSlapper69 12h ago

The only people claiming it “feels like native” either do not have or have never played on good hardware and/or they are not very competitive and cannot feel significant input lag.

Cloud gaming will NEVER be useful for competitive shooters, racing games, precision platformers, or any other type of game where response time is important.

1

u/iMedium 11h ago

It's fairly close, and for gpu intensive single player games it's a good solution for now while prices are decent.

I'd argue the people considering cloud gaming aren't exactly the audience who need 20 less ms in competitive shooters anyway lol.

2

u/NutSlapper69 11h ago

20ms is would already be a big enough disadvantage, but I also think that number is too low for the reality of cloud gaming. Obviously going to vary from service to service, and isp to isp, but in my experience it has been around 70-200ms of extra delay.

You are right about the type of people that would use it though… although I don’t like competitive shooters, but there is not a singular game I can think of where it would be worth playing on cloud gaming personally.

0

u/[deleted] 11h ago

[deleted]

0

u/iMedium 11h ago

Linus did testing on it, you're just wrong, but that's okay.

1

u/Forsaken-Factor-489 8h ago

Played a MOBA on GFN years ago at a higher level than you're capable of. Lol

1

u/NutSlapper69 6h ago edited 6h ago

Now I know you’re making stuff up.

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u/Defiant_Restaurant61 16h ago

Might depend on where you live, I use Shadow PC in western Europe and don't get any noticeable input latency but I used to have it with GeForce Now and Boosteroid before I switched. 

I have fiber + a wired internet connection to my computer though, otherwise I'll get the occasionnal lag spike.

2

u/FalloutOW 15h ago

Luna has been surprisingly good in my experience. Even playing a racing game, some motorcycle one, felt pretty good. I'm terrible at it, but I'm sure th input lag wasn't to fault there.

Works good as a way for my daughter (5) to play the Bluey game on our Fire TV. Just BT a controller up to the TV and you're good to go.

But yea, time limits and input lag would ruin that shit in a heartbeat.

2

u/Fat_cat_syndicate 15h ago

Have you considered moving closer to US-East-1?

1

u/freedombuckO5 15h ago

The latency will never be better for cloud gaming because it takes time for the electrons carrying the data to physically travel to your computer from wherever the server is.

1

u/Mccobsta 15h ago

I've tried a few and the xcloud around it's global launch was the best like genuinely felt like it was running on my phone

Tried a while ago now and yeah it's rough now

1

u/FantasySuperhero000 15h ago

PlayStation Now always had buggy controls. Google Stadia had pixelated graphics. I prefer local gaming.

1

u/CaterpillarReal7583 15h ago

Any reaction based game is a nightmare.

1

u/GeorgeKaplanIsReal 15h ago

Yeah. I’ve had ok experiences with it but when it gets shitty, it gets really shitty lol

1

u/reluctant_return 15h ago

Stadia was good if you used the 120fps mode. I played Destiny 2 via Stadia with a mouse and keyboard for tons of hours that way. The 60fps stream had very obvious latency for me, but the 120fps was good enough I didn't notice any.

1

u/ObeseVegetable 15h ago

For me the latency is fine but the video gets me. 

It’s almost always that 720p minimum settings upscaled to 1080p with a ton of artifact bullshit 

1

u/einzweidreihorn 15h ago

Never had any issue without fiber.

1

u/ockhams-lightsaber 15h ago

I’m satisfied with the cloud gaming (more like cloud computing) service I have but I’m only using it because my computer can’t play games. 

Big companies like Microsoft and Nvidia are squeezing every single penny out of everyone because of “rising costs”. YOU are the one rising the costs dumb asses. Who are building new data centers every month ? 

1

u/Kup123 15h ago

I remember when gamers didn't want to use wireless controllers do to slight input delays a human couldn't notice. They are never going to happy with cloud gaming, it just can't be fast enough.

1

u/Narrow_Reading_7724 15h ago

Works fine for me. Recently completed Campaign Evolved on the Steam Deck via Cloud but a MS Data Centre is only 15 miles from me so that might explain the good performance

1

u/blackop 15h ago

Yeah I think the only game I have ever enjoyed while cloud gaming was slay the spire.

1

u/devedander 15h ago

That’s my thing… we literally have gaming mode on TVs to get rid of 10-20 ms.

Encoding decoding and travel time is hard pressed to not be at least that bad.

1

u/Adezar 15h ago

I don't even use a wireless mouse/keyboard because they have too much latency for gaming.

Speed of electricity + distance + routing/switching means there are limits to how low you can get the latency. All the bandwidth in the world doesn't help if you are just trying to send tiny bits of data (key presses/mouse movements) constantly.

1

u/iMedium 11h ago

Wireless mice have matched or exceeded wired, I don't see the point in wireless keyboard but you're missing out on wireless mice.

1

u/avelineaurora 15h ago

Sounds like a personal problem. I have a GFN sub and even on a 200/20 line I had 0 issues playing even latency important games like Destiny and The Finals.

1

u/WackyRacketeer 15h ago

Could it be server based? I have mediocre internet and have no problems with it.

1

u/GeraldoOfCanada 15h ago

Turn based games and stuff work good enough which is all I ever use it for

1

u/radicldreamer 15h ago

I bought the steam streaming device a while back, the latency even on my LAN was annoying. It sounded cool in theory, I could stream my game library to my house or the world, but reality set it and any games that require even relatively precise input were trash on it. It may have worked for something like Sim city or some other point and click game but it just can't do what it needs to do, and that's not lag.

1

u/leonredhorse 14h ago

What's funny is I have a Founder's subscription for NVIDIA GeForce Now, so I was trying it on Linux and the input latency was really, really bad trying to play an FPS. Basically unplayable in any real sense. So I tried upgrading to their Ultimate just to see if anything was different since you get a few more options... and suddenly it was playable. It is still worse than local machine, but I played the MW4 Beta on it and was extremely competitive. Sometimes if I don't feel like swapping over on my dual boot, I'll play BF6 on it.

Wild how your input latency and experience changes between tiers. Not to mention the ultimate tier is stupidly expensive. I don't plan to keep it, but it was worth a test to see what was possible. But if I need to own the game anyways, it would just be better to swap to my Windows partition if the game doesn't work in Linux.

1

u/ToMorrowsEnd 14h ago

And where it makes sense when traveling, its utterly useless. WOuld love to do cloud Xbox while at airports or in the hotel. Oh wait those places intentionally have the worst internet possible.

1

u/Capable_Swordfish701 14h ago

I tried playing heavenly sword on a psnow trial when it first came out. The game has a lot of quick time events, I’d hit the buttons as soon as they came on screen, but with the latency it was too late. Tried to memorize the sequences so I could try to hit them before they came on screen so it would count. But that sucked so I just stopped playing.

1

u/Susurrus03 14h ago edited 14h ago

I've had good experiences with Luna.

I don't pay for Luna specifically, but there's a decent amount playable games for people who have Prime subscriptions.

Xbox isn't terrible either but a bit grainy. It's nice they let you stream with an Essential membership.

Never used PlayStation's streaming because I don't pay for Premium. I have remote played using my Portal with success though. I have a buddy that streams games a lot including when we play Co-op online and he seems to like it, though.

The Cloud Version Switch games (I only did demos) are terrible.

Of course being on fiber as well, I'll just download the game in a few minutes and it doesn't really matter.

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u/Tall_Opportunity_521 14h ago

It really only works if you live in silicon valley, and have a 50TB organic brain connection between your home and the data centre.

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u/fallouthirteen 14h ago

Yeah, like already it sucked when I tried it. Now you just are only able to play less of that sucky experience. Already had no interest in using it more (and often forget it's a thing).

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u/goober-actual 14h ago

speed of light is only so fast

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u/jawisko 14h ago

It recently started in my city so I gave it a try. The latency was pretty good in my experience. Completed all 5 gears of war with my brother in online Co op

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u/yeezusbro 14h ago

Google Stadia was awesome

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u/Zalvren 14h ago

Yeah I have 2 to 8 Gbps fiber connection, Wifi on the mobile reach 1-1.5 Gbps easily and good ping in every game and it's still super shit. Either they are cheapening on where they put the servers for it or the tech really sucks (only ever tried Xbox Cloud Gaming to be fair, maybe it's just them who sucks)

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u/fedexpoopracer 14h ago

who knew that a gaming product whose whole bottleneck is solely dependent on your internet connection would be total shit?

i can't believe they even invented this

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u/Soulsheartless 13h ago

It’s never been a good experience. I’m not sure who ever thought it was a good idea.

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u/Chevy8t8 13h ago

Ps now works surprisingly well for me, but I agree. Streaming services prioritize the visual fidelity instead of the streaming connection, which makes no sense to me.

I will gladly play a lower resolution game in exchange for higher frame rate and reduced latency.

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u/Ws6fiend 13h ago

It heavily depends on what you play.

On cloud trying to play any kind of shooter or game that requires quick timing and reflexes is bad because of the variability of the input lag.

For something like a turn based rpg latency doesn't matter. And this is the crux of the problem. Most gamers aren't playing the games which can deal with input lag easily.

Also if you are on fiber and cloud gaming isn't working well then your wifi network is congested, you have a router issue, or some other technical hurdle.

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u/ToGrey2Care 13h ago

Sometimes this a device hardware issue. Or just the ingest you happen to connect to.

BT module or nec cards are not all created equal either are controllers. Theres so many variables. Sometimes its the software, os or firm are of device

Ive seen top end gaming motherboards with awful BT handling

That being said when cloud is good its good. personally xcloud had super low latency for me. But when its bad its bad.

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u/Silent-Land1218 13h ago

Make sure your device has WiFi 5 or higher. I just bought a new tablet to play cloud gaming and it's way smoother and less latency than both my phone and laptop.

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u/Trick-Routine-8577 13h ago

I played la noire using onlive and an Xperia play phone in 2011 and have been cloud gaming since then. Sometimes it's a little too laggy to play but 80 percent of the time, it's fine.

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u/Harbinger2001 13h ago

Interesting. My son’s tv has Xbox cloud and I was able to run Doom: Eternal with no noticeable input lag.

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u/UpDownLeftRightGay 12h ago

Eh, GeForce Now is like 20-30ms or so. Not something your average player is ever going to notice. You don't need particularly good internet and even wifi is perfectly playable.

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u/QuickQuirk 12h ago

Yeah, you have to be geographically close to the datacenter to avoid the limits of physics.

Even on the relatively small scale of the US, practical best case round trip time from east to west coast is 60 or 70 milliseconds!

That's equivalent to 2 frames extra latency even at a really slow 30FPS.

So even in the US, if you're far from a local datacenter, it can be bad.

As soon as you're outside the US, in a country where there's no local datacenter, it gets worse.

Try cloud gaming from New Zealand, for example...

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u/Kastar_Troy 12h ago

Until we have quantum entanglement networking(which probably wont work), it will never be good, fps lag with network lag must be the worst.

Imagine playing a survival game on cloud, so painful.

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u/Lepelotonfromager 11h ago

Well yeah obviously. I've never understood the stupidity of people pushing this when was always going to be an issue.

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u/Frequent_Opportunist 11h ago

Have you tried the Nvidia service? 

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u/Ho3n3r 11h ago

Makes sense since the limiting factor will be latency, not speed (unless you have really bad internet).

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u/Golden-trichomes 11h ago

I streamed over a cellular internet provider without any real issues but even at 30-45 minutes a day that I might play I’m over the 15 hour cap.

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u/Dje4321 10h ago

Yep. You need fiber connection with an in-city DC to handle the games. Anything more and your hitting the point where latency is too great for direct feedback

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u/BrandonUzumaki 10h ago

Yeah, that's the worst part for me, imagine having to worry about ping and latency in a single player game lmao.

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u/teshh 10h ago

How is cloud gaming for single player games such as ck3, stellaris, etc. I imagine being able to offload the calculations would make the game run much smoother in late game.

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u/Warmbly85 8h ago

Really? I’ve played a bunch of stuff that (mainly single player) and I haven’t experienced anything that bad yet. Granted I’ve only used it a couple dozen times over the last few years with free months included with other purchases.

I haven’t seen too much of an increase or decrease in quality from when they first released it to a month ago.

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u/paulisaac 8h ago

Even the best input latency is still variable, which makes it a total no-go for Fortnite Festival (rhythm game)

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u/Baial 5h ago

I find that's okay on turn based games.

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u/Gemini-88 4h ago

Yep, it’ll work fine for a bit, but then it goes down hill. Disconnects, lag, you name it, it happens. It’s a gimmicky thing that they want to push, but any meaningful gaming on it is not feasible.

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u/PercentageNo3293 1h ago

Not defending cloud gaming, for obvious reasons, but I bought my nephew a controller to use for Luna. I was surprised how well it worked. It's miles ahead of Stadia (my father purchased it for himself).

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u/wwarhammer 16h ago

Stadia worked really well for me! The input lag wasn't noticeable during normal gameplay, only if you made quick movements on purpose, then you juuust noticed it. 

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u/Scholar_Artistic 16h ago

Is this xbox or pc? Im on xbox, about 25mbps upload, play online games, hardly ever an issue

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u/SPAKMITTEN 14h ago

Did you just type Fibre with a hard R

0

u/Googoo123450 16h ago

Yeah not to mention the very obvious compression artifacts. Sure the rig running the game is outputting 4K but you are absolutely not seeing 4K at home. It looks blurry and dull. It's bad enough that if in the future that's the only option then I'd rather just not play.

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u/Dry_Conflict8519 16h ago

Even on the least demanding games. Like Balatro.