Late last year, Xbox announced the “This Is an Xbox” marketing campaign, which basically pushed the idea that any number of devices is now an Xbox. From phones to TVs, Xbox is clearly pushing itself as a cloud streaming platform, especially when it added the ability for users to stream their own games. Last month, ASUS and Xbox announced the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally handheld, which is essentially an Xbox-branded ROG Ally handheld PC with some enhancements. At the time, the messaging seemed confusing for general consumers who expected the ROG Xbox Ally to be an Xbox console rather than a PC. Obviously, there would be plenty of confusion if someone purchased an ROG Xbox Ally and realized they aren’t able to access any of their console games.
To address that, Xbox is adding more cloud-playable console titles to the Xbox PC app and adding features so that play history follows across devices. Starting today, Xbox Insiders can browse all their cloud-playable games included in their play history and library directly from the Xbox PC app as part of these new additions. This collection spans cloud-playable titles from the original Xbox to the Xbox Series X|S, whether a user owns the game or accesses it through Game Pass. The goal is to make it easier to jump into a game, regardless of device.
These new updates suggest that Xbox’s next console is likely to be a PC. The process of making all console games playable via cloud streaming may be bumpy at first before delivering an acceptable experience. It will be interesting to see if this is the route Xbox plans because backward compatibility has been an important selling point for consoles, ensuring players can access their entire library.
