is a senior editor and author of Notepad , who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years.
Over the past week, I’ve been using Nvidia’s new RTX 5080 GeForce Now tier. Nvidia’s cloud gaming service has been the best on the market for years now, and this upgrade makes it even better. I’ve been playing Cyberpunk 2077, Overwatch 2, and Silksong, and it’s genuinely comparable to my own PC.
The upgrade is also a staggering reminder of just how far behind Xbox Cloud Gaming is, both in stream quality and latency — two key components for streaming games from the cloud. Microsoft needs a far better cloud for its Xbox everywhere strategy. Fortunately, there are plenty of signs that it’s about to get a much-needed upgrade.
Xbox Cloud Gaming started off as Project xCloud in 2019, promising to bring streaming Xbox games to mobile devices and tablets. In the early days of xCloud, it was largely an add-on for Game Pass subscribers and a way to fend off competition from Google’s Stadia service. Six years later, Xbox Cloud Gaming is now a key offering in Microsoft’s mission to bring Xbox games to as many devices as possible.
I’ve been streaming games through Nvidia’s GeForce Now service at impressive quality at 5K resolution this week, making the switch back to Xbox Cloud Gaming at 1080p particularly jarring. The low bitrates make games with a lot of movement or action blocky at times due to high compression, and the limit of 60fps doesn’t help with latency and responsiveness. On GeForce Now, Nvidia now offers a 360fps mode at 1080p, which is 500 percent more frames than Xbox Cloud Gaming.
The biggest issue I have with Xbox Cloud Gaming right now is just how inconsistent it is. Some games run at higher bitrates than others, and some devices, like TVs, get a better experience than my phone or PC. To ensure I get the best quality, I have to use a third-party tool like the excellent Better xCloud to get 17Mbps streams instead of blockier 10Mbps ones.
Microsoft appears to be readying some upgrades to Xbox Cloud Gaming, though. A number of players have spotted a new 1440p mode in recent weeks. Digital Foundry managed to get this new mode running with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and kindly shared some footage with me. The 1440p stream really helps improve the visual quality of the game, with a higher resolution and bitrates that can peak at 27Mbps. It’s still not on par with GeForce Now, but it’s definitely an improvement over what exists on Xbox Cloud Gaming today.
Xbox Cloud Gaming is also getting two new “HQ” modes for both 720p and 1080p. The developer of Better xCloud spotted these in code on Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming website this week, and the 1440p mode is also included.
I asked Microsoft about the new 1440p mode and higher quality resolutions for Xbox Cloud Gaming, but the company declined to comment.
While there are some much-needed upgrades to Xbox Cloud Gaming on the way, I don’t think we’ll see a huge upgrade until Microsoft moves to PC hardware inside its data centers. Microsoft upgraded its xCloud servers to Series X hardware in 2021, bringing big improvements to load times and frame rates. With the Xbox next-gen console being tied to AMD chips that span across multiple devices, the next big Xbox Cloud Gaming upgrade will undoubtedly also be tied to those new chips.
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