The upcoming Xbox streaming platform by Microsoft known ‘xCloud’ will be entering public beta in select countries (UK, US and Korea) next month, as confirmed by Microsoft during Septembers Inside Xbox live stream.
Microsoft first announced xCloud a little over a year ago, and since then we’ve seen various gameplay videos and small snippets of information, but until now there has been no mention of a launch date of a beta.
If you’re not familiar with xCloud, there’s two sides of it; this beta is for the cloud streaming part of xCloud which allows you to play games which you don’t have on your Xbox via the cloud, kind of like a Netflix for games. The second side of it will allow you to stream games from your own Xbox to a mobile wherever you are in the world, essentially giving you your own private xCloud server, but the beta will not include this feature. It will only include the former.
Yes, this means you could be playing Forza Horizon 4 or Sea of Theives with your friends on your phone while travelling or on the toilet in the very near future. Exciting times.
Microsoft will begin a public test of Project xCloud, its Xbox game streaming service, in selected countries next month. The beta will include Halo 5: Guardians, Sea of Theives, and Killer Instinct at launch, but more games are set to be added over time as the beta develops, and yes these games will all be free to play while in beta.
If you’re from any of the following countries – UK, US and Korea – you can sign up for an invite to the xCloud beta right now, however, it’s important to note that for the time being the beta is only available for Android devices. iOS devices will be following but there’s not ETA for that at present.
Microsoft hasn’t said how long this beta will last, all they have said is that it will last “until customers are consistently reporting a great, fun experience and the technology meets our internal quality standards.”.
Want to learn more about xCloud? Take a look at the E3 trailer below:
What do you think of what you’ve seen of Project xCloud so far? Have you signed up for the beta? Let us know in the comments below!
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