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
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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.

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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.

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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. 👍🏻

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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.

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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. 👍🏻