Tested
'HOLY GRAIL'
GAMERS may soon chuck their consoles in the bin in favour of a new games system unveiled by Microsoft.
The Project xCloud streaming app lets you play games anywhere, anytime by plugging your smartphone into a controller.
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The tech has been talked about for months but Microsoft finally showed it off in all its glory at its E3 press event yesterday.
The xCloud service runs on Xbox One X hardware modified to run in a data centre.
It promises to let users play Xbox games on any device with a screen and an internet connection.
"Project xCloud’s state-of-the-art global game-streaming technology will offer you the freedom to play on the device you want without being locked to a particular device," the firm claimed in a blog post last year.
What's it like to play?
From Alex Sassoon Coby, Digital Gaming Editor in Los Angeles
MICROSOFT talks a good game with xCloud, but is it all mouth and no trousers?
From what we've seen, it really is the real deal.
Getting hands on with a demo at E3, we played Halo 5 using a mobile phone clipped to the top of an Xbox controller.
It had a decent internet connection over WiFi, with the games running in a Microsoft data centre several hundred miles away.
It delivers performance that's as good or better than Sony's Remote Play, without the need for you to use your own console to do it.
The only problem is the small size of the screen, especially when using a controller.
The games are still designed expecting you to have a huge telly in front of you, so trying to read on-screen prompts, pick out distant targets and other basic functions are really quite hard, even using something as big as a Galaxy S10+.
Getting closer to the screen obviously helps, but there's only so close you can comfortably get it to your face while it's mounted to a full-size controller.
The performance is great, though - blowing Covenant into tiny pieces was every bit as sharp and snappy as you'd hope for.
The graphics looked super-sharp, the controls were as responsive as you could wish for, and it's definitely a viable way to play as long as you've got a decent internet connection.
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It's being launched soon, along with another streaming service that lets you use your own Xbox console to stream games to your phone or other devices.
You'll be able to stream AAA games on the go, much like you would a Netflix show.
The service will enter public testing later this year.
In a video revealing details of the new service, Microsoft explained that this isn't the end of the road for consoles, as they provide a "uniquely immersive" set up for gaming.
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Project xCloud is meant to be an alternative for those who don't have access to a console either at all, or just at that moment in time.
The platform will compete with Google's upcoming game streaming service, Google Stadia.
Stadia will run games on computers that sit in Google's data centres around the world, and then stream the video output to your screen.
It's due for release in November, while Microsoft haven't put a firm date on xCloud just yet.
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