The era of cloud gaming did not come with the intensity that was imminent a few years ago when major tech platforms announced their games. In 2021, despite the established presence of almost all of the largest technology companies, the market is still as good as nonexistent.
Microsoft has slowly managed to roll out its Xbox Cloud Gaming beta to its users across platforms, but that’s probably because they know that unlike other Upstart platforms, there isn’t much of an advantage to running out the window first, unlike other Upstart platforms. This week the company will begin rolling out the service on iOS and PC to Game Pass Ultimate users. It will be invited to a limited number of users and will expand over time.
“The limited beta is our time to test and learn. We will continuously send more invitations to players in all 22 supported countries, evaluate feedback, further improve the experience and add support for additional devices, ”wrote Catherine Gluckstein from Xbox in a blog post. “Our plan is to iterate quickly over the coming months and open up to all Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members so that more people have the opportunity to play Xbox in a whole new way.”
The service has been available in beta for Android users since last year, but has been slow to roll out to other platforms outside of this world.
Much of this slowdown is due to Apple playing hardball with cloud gaming platform providers whose business models pose a major threat to app store gaming revenues. Apple announced a spin-off for cloud gaming platforms designed to maintain reliance on the App Store and in-app purchase frameworks, but none of the vendors seemed very happy with Apple’s solution. As a result, Xbox Cloud Gaming on iOS in Mobile Safari runs entirely over the internet.