Report: Xbox Cloud Gaming Will Soon Add Free Ad-Supported Tier

Microsoft is reportedly planning to announce a free ad-supported tier for Xbox Cloud Gaming, its cloud gaming service that just dropped its beta tag this week. The free-to-play game Fortnite can already be played on Xbox Cloud Gaming without a subscription, but according to The Verge’s Tom Warren, Microsoft now plans to make other games playable for free for a certain amount of time after watching pre-roll ads.

“Sources tell me the internal testing includes around two minutes of preroll ads before a game is available to stream for free through Xbox Cloud Gaming. Microsoft is also currently testing a limit of one hour for sessions, with up to five hours free a month. These limits may well change when the service is officially launched,” Warren wrote.

This free ad-supported tier will reportedly let gamers play select Xbox games they own, similar to what Nvidia’s GeForce Now service offers. But that won’t be all, as games featured in Microsoft’s weekly Free Play Days events should also be included, as well as the Xbox Retro Classics anthology of old-school Activision games.

Warren believes that Microsoft will launch a public beta test for this free ad-supported tier soon, with the full launch to follow in the coming months. It took no less than six years for Xbox Cloud Gaming to go out of beta, and competing with Nvidia’s superior GeForce Now service isn’t going to be easy.

This week, Microsoft announced big upgrades for Xbox Cloud Gaming for subscribers on its Game Pass Ultimate tier, though at the cost of a 50% price increase. The subscription, which now costs $360 a year in the US, lets gamers stream select games at up to 1440p/60FPS. This is still inferior to the up to 5K/360 FPS quality that Nvidia offers on its GeForce Now Ultimate tier, which is also cheaper at $200/year.

Microsoft received a lot of criticism for its Game Pass price increases this week, and the launch of an ad-supported version of Xbox Cloud Gaming will be coming during a challenging period for the Xbox division. While it’s certainly good to make cloud gaming more accessible, this comes from a company announcing two price increases for its Xbox consoles and Game Pass subscriptions in just a couple of months.