Original article:
If you've been waiting for Xbox Cloud Gaming to go live in India, you might be in luck.
Xbox Cloud Gaming is Microsoft's subscription based game streaming service, allowing you to play a large variety of games remotely from Microsoft's Azure cloud.
Different tiers of Xbox Game Pass give access to different tiers of Xbox Cloud Gaming. Essentials gives you basic access, with a couple of dozen games and lowest queue priority. Premium gives you some more games, and boosted queue priority, and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate gives you hundreds of games, as well as 1440p resolution, boosted bitrate, and day one Xbox games like Call of Duty.
The service is currently officially supported in 28 regions. Many of the world's biggest gaming markets are omitted, however, including the likes of China. One of the world's fastest-growing gaming markets may be looking to join the party, though.
Spotted by Better XCloud developer RedPhx, Microsoft appears to be inserting Xbox Cloud Gaming into servers across India, whose gamers currently rank around 7th in the world for gaming spend.
The new Xbox Cloud Gaming stacks have appeared in the Central India Azure data center located in Pune, Maharashtra, and the South India data center, located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Central India sports Microsoft's most advanced data center in the region, although its South and West India data centers are also expanding.
Xbox Cloud Gaming recently picked up some of its most impressive upgrades yet, with 1440p resolution and boosted bitrate actually taking it further than Xbox Series X|S console remote play in terms of quality. The amount of games that support this new boosted resolution is relatively low, but it will grow rapidly over time. Microsoft's "Stream Your Own Game" feature on Xbox Cloud Gaming rolled out a few months ago, but already boasts over 2100 titles from Xbox's extensive console game library.
Today, Xbox Cloud Gaming is available in 26 regions, including: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. It works on any modern web browser via xbox.com/play with an Xbox controller, and also on Samsung TVs, any Windows 10 or 11 PC, Amazon Fire Stick TV dongles, and much more.
Microsoft is in an increasingly competitive space, as players like NVIDIA GeForce Now and Sony PlayStation continue to vie for the top spot in this nascent market.
NVIDIA GeForce Now leverages its industry-leading GPUs to provide what is arguably the best resolution and streaming experience, although its UX across devices can be a bit iffy. Xbox Cloud Gaming is catching up to NVIDIA GFN in terms of quality, but is arguably the most user-friendly of the three, while also sporting Xbox's massive content library.
PlayStation Plus is no slouch, though. Powered by its Gaikai acquisition a few years back, Sony remains a pioneer in the space. They've become the first of the traditional console makers to release a dedicated cloud gaming handheld with the PlayStation Portal, although you do still need a PS5 console to perform the initial set up (at least as of writing).
All three services are bottle necked in different ways by Apple and Google's draconian mobile stores, sadly, but Xbox does have a capable web app, and thanks to Azure, a global expansion advantage as we might be seeing here in India. However, it might be a bit too early to celebrate, given that Xbox Cloud Gaming was also activated in Chile back in the summer, but has yet to materialize as an officially supported region.
We've reached out to Microsoft to see if they can give us any more details on India joining the us in the xclouds. Watch this space.
UPDATE: Confirmed, Xbox Cloud Gaming is now available in India. Head over to Xbox.com/Play to get started.
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