From today, Xbox Insiders without a Game Pass subscription can buy cloud gaming hours to stream games, ahead of a broader rollout planned for November. The service, now called Xbox Cloud Playtime, works on a pay-as-you-go basis: there is no monthly fee, just packs of hours to buy when needed.
The launch prices, which Microsoft calls "introductory", are: 10 hours for $4, 25 hours for $8 and 50 hours for $12. According to Ars Technica, that works out to about $0.40 an hour for the smallest pack, dropping to about $0.24 for the largest. Purchased hours remain available until they are used, so they do not expire at the end of the month as subscription time does.
The packs include ad-free streaming, shorter wait times and higher-quality transmission. For those who want to try the service for free, Xbox also offers an ad-supported option, already available to Insiders.
The new model follows the cutbacks Microsoft announced in September, when it limited the streaming hours included with Game Pass subscriptions. The Ultimate plan, which costs $23 a month, now caps at 15 hours of cloud gaming, while the cloud tier has been described as limited to a minimum of five hours a month. Players who want more will be able to buy extra hours, as we already reported in our article on the monthly limits.
The comparison with Nvidia's GeForce Now is different. Nvidia's service costs $10 a month and offers up to 100 hours of play, but requires owning the games already on storefronts such as Steam. Game Pass, by contrast, gives access to hundreds of titles without buying them one by one.
The question of games already owned weighs on the verdict. Anyone who already owns a title still has to pay to stream it, and that pricing choice has drawn criticism from players. On Grand Theft Auto VI, due on November 19, Matthew Ball denied that the game will be streamed exclusively on PC, without clarifying whether it will arrive on Xbox cloud. TweakTown estimates a 100-hour pack would cost about $24, but neither Microsoft nor Rockstar has confirmed that streaming is possible.
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