Another week, another episode of DF Direct and Microsoft’s latest endeavours are our lead topics of discussion. Last week, the Xbox app for the Amazon Fire Stick 4K was released, backed by aggressive marketing from Microsoft suggesting that you don’t need an Xbox to play Xbox. On a broad level, the message is accurate but based on the quality of service, things need to change significantly before we can endorse that idea, whether you’re experiencing Xbox on PC or via the cloud.
I bought an Amazon Fire Stick 4K Max to test Xbox streaming last week, but fully expected the experience to mirror the current cloud streaming offering available via an Xbox console or PC. After all, the quality of the streaming isn’t really defined by your client hardware but rather whatever data is streamed at you by Microsoft’s servers. The difference offered by the Fire Stick is, of course, accessibility. Similar to its endeavours in getting cloud streaming working on Samsung TVs, this is all about opening up Xbox to more potential users who may not be particularly interested in buying a console. The idea is sound, but I feel the execution needs work.
Even though you need one of the 4K versions of the latest Fire Stick to stream Xbox, it’s the same 1080p stream we’ve seen previously in our prior tests. Microsoft deserves some kudos for input lag response that beats its PlayStation counterpart. It’s still noticeably slower than the local experience, but you can adjust to it. Mostly, it’s fine, especially if you choose a game that runs at 60 frames per second. Microsoft also deserves kudos for an interface that works and a clear suggestion from the app to switch your TV into Game Mode (mine defaulted to ‘Film Maker’ mode on an LG CX OLED – good for media content, not good for gaming).
0:00:00 Introduction0:00:54 News 01: Microsoft says you don’t need an Xbox to play Xbox0:24:31 News 02: Game Pass prices increased0:38:36 News 03: New Black Myth: Wukong PC details revealed0:53:26 News 04: Original Xbox gets 1.4GHz CPU upgrade1:01:34 News 05: The First Descendant frame-gen tested!1:13:21 News 06: Ace Combat 7 tested on Switch1:19:41 Supporter Q1: Which Windows-based PC handheld would you recommend most?1:25:36 Supporter Q2: Will you be doing more three-person gameplay videos?1:29:44 Supporter Q3: What old unused Nintendo IP would you like to see again?1:34:45 Supporter Q4: If Microsoft got Windows working seamlessly on ARM, what would that mean for their products?1:43:27 Supporter Q5: Do you think Valve will give Steam Machines another shot?1:49:21 Supporter Q6: Why is Intel’s XeSS better than AMD’s FSR?1:59:01 Supporter Q7: Will Unreal Engine traversal stutter be fixed for the new Witcher game?2:02:08 Supporter Q8: Could the PS Portal be updated or hacked to be a substantially more useful device?2:06:25 Supporter Q9: John asks: how is the recording session going?
However, the gameplay experience isn’t quite good enough. The stream itself is starved of bitrate, meaning that the quality of the image is relatively poor – especially when streamed to a large, living room display. Macroblocking is easily noticeable, even on static screens, particularly on graduated colour transitions – the Starfield menu system is a good example of this. Other content fares better (Forza Horizon 5 looked fine), but this is in no way a replacement for the local experience.