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Microsoft promised on June 10 that it was in the “final stages” of upgrading its Xbox Cloud Gaming data centers (xCloud) with the Xbox Series X — and after about two weeks, it looks like you can finally play games on this new hardware. Some xCloud games now display upgraded graphics options in their settings menus that will only be available on Xbox Series X, or load to xCloud much faster than they used to be.
You can see the upgraded graphics settings for Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Rainbow Six Siege in this tweet from my colleague Tom Warren:
It looks like xCloud just got the Xbox Series X upgrade for some games. Yakuza, Rainbow Six Siege, and others offer 120fps or gfx options, and load faster pic.twitter.com/BUU866V0BF
– Tom Warren (@tomwarn) June 22, 2021
I also noticed that the Dirt 5 loaded really fast and didn’t have much lag while racing. On the other hand, Forza Horizon 4 doesn’t seem to work on upgraded xCloud devices; I felt the latency was much worse than in Dirt 5 and the game loaded much slower.
In a statement, Microsoft did not confirm that the new server hardware was up and running, but promised to have news on the matter soon. “We are constantly testing new features and making improvements to create an even better Xbox Cloud gaming experience,” Microsoft said. “We’ll have more to share soon about the upgrades we’re making to our Microsoft data centers.”
On June 10, Microsoft also said that Xbox Cloud Gaming, which is currently available as an invite-only beta, will be available through the browser to all Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members “in the next few weeks.” During E3, Microsoft also revealed that xCloud will be coming to Xbox One consoles, which means that older generation consoles will be able to play next-generation games like Microsoft Flight Simulator via the cloud.
And earlier this week, the company revealed that it plans to build “cloud-native games,” and hire the woman behind Portal as the new senior director of Cloud Gaming at Xbox Game Studios.
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Picture Credit!