Starting today, you’ll be able to play more than a dozen Xbox and Xbox 360 games via cloud streaming, Microsoft announced in a blog post. As with other game streaming, the perk is only available to members of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
Cloud streaming first became available last September with an initial launch slate of more than 170 games, playable on an Android device via the Game Pass app. If you have a solid internet (or 5G) connection and a decent mobile controller, it’s actually pretty cool. You’d think games like Halo 5: Guardians and Forza Horizon 4 are meant for 55-inch TVs and vivid 4K displays. Then you play them on the go, and realize the potential of this service.
Though Xbox and Xbox 360 games have been part of the Game Pass library for sometime, today marks the first time you’ll be able to stream them to a mobile device. Microsoft says more games are “coming soon.” For now, here’s the starting list, which includes Fable II but, sadly, not the far superior Fable III:
- Banjo-Kazooie
- Banjo-Tooie
- Double Dragon Neon
- Fable II
- Fallout: New Vegas
- Gears of War 2
- Gears of War 3
- Gears of War: Judgment
- Jetpac Refuelled (touch controls enabled)
- Kameo
- Perfect Dark
- Perfect Dark Zero
- The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
- Viva Piñata (touch controls enabled)
- Viva Piñata: TIP (touch controls enabled)
Today’s news is yet another data point marking a growing divide between the two tiers of Microsoft’s games-on-demand service. For $10 month, you can sign up for Xbox Game Pass, which allows you to download and play games from a Netflix-style library.
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Meanwhile, for $15 a month, you can sign up for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which allows access to that same library plus a number of perks, including a bundled-in Xbox Live Gold membership and access to EA Play. You can also stream games to an Android device. And, as of today, that includes what Microsoft calls “retro” games, which engenders the subsequent desire to crumble into dust when you realize that term includes Fable II.