Microsoft has surprisingly partnered with Amazon to offer Xbox Cloud Gaming

What do you want to know

• Xbox Cloud Gaming is a $15 per month service that comes with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate that lets you stream hundreds of games on mobile, PC, and web.
• Right now, to get Xbox Cloud Gaming on a TV, you need to use a connected Xbox console (which can run games natively anyway) or own an often expensive Samsung TV.
• Today, Microsoft and Amazon announced a partnership to bring the Xbox Cloud Gaming app to Amazon Fire TV devices, significantly expanding the platform’s accessibility.

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Xbox Cloud Gaming is a great option for those who don’t like buying an expensive video game console or gaming PC, offering hundreds of games for $15 per month with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Playable on Android devices, iOS via the web at xbox.com/play, Xbox consoles, and Samsung TVs, Xbox Cloud Gaming streams Xbox games over the internet, eliminating the need for powerful local hardware.

Xbox games are still designed for TV screens, and playing many cloud games on a phone can be a tricky affair, even with the best Xbox cloud gaming mobile controllers. Even if you don’t have an Xbox console, Xbox cloud games work best on a TV, but until now only Samsung TVs had this privilege. Samsung TVs with the necessary gaming hub feature can also be quite expensive, but what if there was a cheaper way?

Now you can take a $40 Amazon Fire TV stick and connect it directly to any monitor and gain instant access to Xbox Cloud Gaming. That’s right, big cloud tech rivals are unexpectedly teaming up for Xbox Cloud Gaming, delivering a native solution for the first time.

“The expansion of Xbox games to Fire TV devices gives gamers another option to enjoy their favorite games using the devices they already own.” said Ashley McKissick, who leads Xbox cloud gaming as Xbox CVP for Xbox Experiences. “For those who don’t own an Xbox console, this provides an affordable and convenient way to get started. With Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, there’s something for every type of gamer. We can’t wait to see more people join the gaming community. Xbox players.”

“We are committed to making it easy for customers to access their favorite entertainment experiences with Fire TV,” said Daniel Rausch, vice president of Fire TV and Alexa. “We’re excited to work with Microsoft to bring the Xbox app to select Fire TV devices so customers can enjoy a vast library of high-quality games, allowing them to play incredible titles without the need for a console.”

Initially, Xbox Cloud Gaming will be available on the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K and Amazon Fire Stick 4K Max models, before potentially expanding to the cheaper Amazon Fire Stick Lite HD model later. The slightly more expensive Max model supports Wi-Fi 6E, which should give it a connectivity advantage over the 4K Wi-Fi 6 model, if your home networking solution supports Wi-Fi 6E. Fi 6 and 6E.

It appears that Xbox Cloud Gaming on Amazon Fire TV will also be available in all regions where Xbox Cloud Gaming is currently available. Naturally, you’ll also need an Xbox Series X|S Bluetooth controller to connect and play through your Fire TV.

An unlikely partnership in the cloud

Amazon and Microsoft are often bitter cloud rivals when it comes to business services applications, going so far as to sue each other for lucrative government contracts. Amazon Gaming and Xbox seem a little colder, however. Microsoft partners extensively with Amazon’s Twitch and Prime Gaming platforms, for example, and Amazon will bring its MMO New World to Xbox later this year. At the end of the day, it’s just business, and this partnership should be mutually beneficial for both.

Amazon has its own cloud gaming platform, called Amazon Luna, and you’d think they’d want to proliferate their own service on their own hardware. But cloud gaming is difficult, and Microsoft already has all the pieces of this puzzle since it acquired Activision-Blizzard, Bethesda and various other major global franchises. Microsoft has already started supporting Amazon Luna with its content, adding Fallout titles to the platform. Of course, Amazon was instrumental in the Fallout franchise’s explosion in popularity thanks to the Amazon Fallout television series. So I would say the relationship between the two companies is probably pretty good right now.

What’s more interesting is that Microsoft still intends to develop Xbox Cloud Gaming. For a while, it felt like Microsoft might have gone backwards. Server capacity remains an issue in some regions, although Microsoft has gradually worked to repair the delta. NVIDIA GeForce Now has also given Microsoft incredibly strong competition in this area, given that its technology is so good that it regularly beats Xbox Cloud Gaming in latency and connection stability. Although recently I discovered that NVIDIA GeForce Now has its own queuing issues.

It was already sort of possible to sideload Xbox Game Pass on a Fire TV, but being able to get it directly from the Amazon App Store will bring it to a whole new audience. It’s also serendipitous timing, as my colleague Zac Bowden yesterday discovered a patent for Microsoft’s canceled Xbox Keystone, similar to the Fire TV.

However, with Microsoft adding a whole new platform with Amazon Fire TV, I wonder how server capacities might be affected. I also wonder what investments Microsoft is making to bring the latency of its experiences to a level comparable to its PC-first brethren. After all, Xbox Cloud Gaming servers are built using Xbox Series X hardware, which isn’t necessarily designed for video encoding.

Regardless, it’s great to see Microsoft isn’t backing down here. However, I’m looking forward to hearing more information about when exactly we can bring our own games to Xbox Cloud Gaming.