I’ve messed with Xbox Cloud Gaming a number of times and have had some good and some bad experiences, but I’ve always felt that someday it’ll achieve its promise as the future of gaming. This week, the company took another step in that direction.
As highlighted by The Verge, Xbox is bringing its dashboard from the Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X to the cloud for the first time. While the current Guide on Cloud Gaming only offers some basic features, the update will bring over a lot more of the features we enjoy on the console.
As Warren highlights in his video below, it’s a huge upgrade from the current Guide on Cloud Gaming. The Guide now looks a heck of a lot more like the one we’re used to with the console. You can start a party to chat with friends, send messages, and more.
Most importantly, party chat now follows you across games. Currently, you have to initiate a party chat after a game has launched, and the chat ends as soon as you close out of the game. That’s no longer the case with the new update. But that’s not the only thing that’s new. Check out all of the features with the new guide:
- Find and manage friends
- Start parties outside of playing games and continue party chats between game sessions (currently not available on Smart TVs)
- Send messages
- View user profiles
- View notification inbox and toasts
- View achievements
While the update is currently only available to Xbox Insider users, it will be awesome to get this when it comes to all users. That timeline is, unfortunately, totally unclear.
Users on browser will need to enable Preview features on their browser to gain access to the feature. This is done by clicking on your profile picture at xbox.com/play and then select Settings and then enable “Preview features.”
While most of us wait, however, you can check out a walkthrough of the new Guide and a quick demo of the upgraded party chat below:
This is definitely the future of gaming
While it’s going to take time, and everyone who has Comcast is going to need better internet speeds, Xbox Cloud Gaming is definitely the future of gaming on the platform and probably the future of gaming, period.
I remember when Netflix rolled out on the Xbox 360 back in the day and streaming television shows and movies seemed like a cool idea but DVDs, Blu-Rays, and Blockbuster were still the mainstream — streaming was just a niche market. Here we are almost 20 years later and not only is Blockbuster dead but cable is on its way out.
While it’s easy to dismiss the cloud in favor of the console now, I can see a future in another 20 years where every device is an Xbox and the cloud takes over as the main way people play on the platform. That seems to be Microsoft’s goal and, with this latest update, it’s starting to take shape.