Xbox Cloud Games Will Soon Follow You Across Xbox, PC, and Windows Handhelds

Microsoft is rolling out updates to the Xbox PC app and consoles that sync your cloud gaming history and progress across devices, making it easier to resume cloud-playable titles on PCs, handhelds, and other Xbox hardware. The Verge reports: Cloud-playable games are now starting to show inside play history or the library on the Xbox PC app. "This includes all cloud playable titles, even console exclusives spanning from the original Xbox to Xbox Series X|S, whether you own the title or access it through Game Pass," explains Lily Wang, product manager of Xbox experiences. Your recent games, including cloud ones, will soon follow you across devices -- complete with cloud-powered game saves. So if you played an Xbox game on your console that's not natively available on PC, it will still show up in your recent games list and be playable through Xbox Cloud Gaming on Windows.

Cloud-playable games on the Xbox PC app can be found from a new filter in the library section, and a new "play history" section will appear at the end of the "jump back in" list on the home screen of the Xbox PC app. "While the large tiles highlight games you've recently played on your current device, the play history tile shows games you've played across any Xbox device, making it easy to pick up where you left off," says Wang. This same play history section will appear on the main Xbox console interface, too -- which could mean we'll eventually see PC games listed here and playable through Xbox Cloud Gaming.

"will soon follow you"

[davidwr]

Microsoft is stalking you. Again.

Re:

[taustin]

Again implies that, at some point, they stopped.

Yeah, but with a Zune this time

[ebunga]

Or is this a step back to WinCE?

I don't want to stream

[HalAtWork]

Especially at 1080p. Besides that I don't enjoy the experience, even if it's a last resort I would rather not do it. It's another subscription, it has lag that gets even worse on mobile, there are compression artifacts, low resolution, no HDR or VRR. Maybe one day we'll get there but I don't want to help along a switch back to the days of dumb terminals and not being able to continue offline.

Re:

[TwistedGreen]

I was excited about streaming games initially, but even with premium service and gigabit fiber, the experience is dreadful. I've tried GeForce Now, Stadia, Luna and they all have that intractable latency problem, plus the extreme compression they put it through which gives you an overall terrible experience. Even streaming locally over gigabit ethernet with Steam kinda sucks and that's the best possible scenario.

I think these problems are insurmountable, but the lure of subscription fees is too great. They'

Wait, what? They don't already do that?

[93 Escort Wagon]

In what manner are they "cloud" games then?

Re:

[buck-yar]

Sounds like Steam's cloud sync, that they've had for forever.

Re: Wait, what? They don't already do that?

[Kyogreex]

They're "cloud games" in the sense that they can be played through their cloud service without needing an Xbox.

Re:

[RamenMan]

Each endpoint had a different save. I am guessing this was to keep the saves separate in the case of the game running on more than one device at a time. I don't know how they handle it now, but I believe that was the issue. My kids play a lot of streamed games, and they knew that their progress on their laptop was different than the progress on their Xbox.

But as an aside- I just switched Xboxes with one of my sons this past weekend. He was very happy that all of his game progress moved over when he logg

Quit bugging me

[Snotnose]

I'm tired of my Win11 laptop bugging me to connect to my Xbox or something, I quit reading when I see 'Xbox'. I don't own an Xbox. I'll probably never own one. I don't game on my laptop so any whatever you may be calling Xbox on the PC is something I'm not interested in.

It's supposed to be a freaking OS, not an advertising platform.