Xbox Cloud Gaming Will Soon Let You Play the Games you Own
- Laurent Giret
- Jun 09, 2022
-
2
Microsoft announced today that its Xbox Cloud Gaming platform will soon allow Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members to play the game they own on any device. Microsoft said that this new capability will be available later this year, though it won’t initially support the full Xbox game library.
“Later this year, it’s our intent to roll out the ability for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members to play, from the cloud, select games they already own or have purchased outside the Xbox Game Pass library,” the Xbox team said today.
Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox
Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!
"*" indicates required fields
As you remember, this is actually something that Kareem Choudhry, Corporate Vice President, CVP of Cloud Gaming at Microsoft announced back in November 2019 as being in the Xbox team’s 2020 roadmap. “In 2020 we will enable gamers to stream from the cloud Xbox games that they already own or will purchase,” the exec said at the time
It’s not exactly clear what happened in this two years interval, though Microsoft likely had to deal with the complexities of licensing games for Xbox Cloud Gaming. In the past couple of years, the Xbox team also faced licensing and legal constraints to bring more Xbox 360 and Original Xbox games to the backward compatibility library on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S consoles.
The perspective of being able to play your personal Xbox game collection on any device thanks to Xbox Cloud Gaming is certainly an exciting one, though Microsoft made it clear today that not all games will be supported, and you’ll also need an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription to enjoy this new capability. Still, this Xbox Cloud Gaming expansion to personal game libraries should definitely contribute to making the Xbox ecosystem more attractive, especially with Microsoft being committed to bringing its game streaming service to as many platforms as possible.
Xbox Cloud Gaming is currently available on Xbox consoles, Windows PCs, iOS and Android devices, as well as any device with a compatible web browser. It’s also coming to 2022 Samsung Smart TVs later this month via a new Xbox app that will be available in the Samsung Gaming Hub.