Today, Microsoft announced that Xbox Cloud Gaming launched in India, the world’s fastest-growing gaming market with over 500 million gamers as of 2025, earlier this month. In total, Xbox Cloud Gaming is now available in the following 29 countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Recently, Microsoft increased server capacity in Argentina and Brazil to reduce waiting times and enhance player experience, following a double-digit growth in play time and active players in these Latin American countries. Indeed, it appears that Xbox Cloud Gaming is also growing globally. According to Microsoft, cloud gaming hours from Game Pass subscribers have increased by 45% compared to this time last year. Console players are also embracing flexibility, spending 45% more time cloud streaming on consoles and 24% more time on other devices.
Microsoft has recently introduced new play options via the Xbox app on LG TVs and Amazon Fire TV devices, in addition to PCs, consoles, smartphones, tablets, and even Virtual Reality headsets such as the Meta Quest. Xbox Cloud Gaming will even be available in cars soon, although its usage in that specific setting is likely to be limited.
Perhaps one of the few positives of the recent, controversial changes to the Xbox Game Pass subscription service is that, whereas Xbox Cloud Gaming was previously only available on the Ultimate tier, multiple Xbox Game Pass plans now grant access to the service. The library of compatible games is expanding as well, with hundreds of games ready to stream through Xbox Game Pass and over a thousand more in the ‘Stream your own game‘ catalogue, with new games added on a regular basis.
The only downside is that Microsoft’s XCloud technology, which is the foundation of XCG, isn’t as good as NVIDIA’s GeForce NOW, despite some recent improvements such as 1440p support for specific games.
A recent rumor suggested that Xbox Cloud Gaming might soon be available for free, albeit with ads. That would certainly make it a viable alternative, if it ever comes to pass.
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