Xbox Game Streaming

Microsoft reveals Xbox Cloud Gaming has over 10 million players, as Stadia remains silent

Ben Schoon | May 24 2022 - 9:41 am PT

Today during the company’s Build conference, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella officially confirmed how many players are using Xbox Cloud Gaming – over 10 million.

Previously known as xCloud, Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming launched to the general public towards the end of 2020 after a lengthy public preview. The streaming gameplay is available as a part of Xbox Game Pass, specifically the “Ultimate” tier of the monthly subscription. Hundreds of games are available to stream through the cloud, and Microsoft even upgraded the backend last year to have cloud gaming powered by the Xbox Series X.

How many players use Xbox Cloud Gaming?

Today at Build, Sataya Nadella revealed the popularity of the company’s cloud efforts. As of 2022, Xbox Cloud Gaming has served over 10 million players in 26 countries around the world. It’s an impressive statistic, especially given the service has only been widely available for less than two years.

Nadella’s full quote follows:

We’re bringing Xbox everywhere with Xbox Cloud Gaming. More than 10 million Xbox players have streamed games across 26 countries.

There aren’t any direct comparisons to be made with this statistic, though. Nvidia previously shared that, during its first year, GeForce Now had racked up over 175 million hours of gameplay to players. Last September, Nvidia updated that stat, saying that over 12 million players use the service across 70 countries. It’s worth noting, too, that Nvidia had a headstart of a few months on Microsoft’s launch.

Nearly three years in, we still have no official metrics on how many players Google Stadia has seen.

9to5Google’s Take

It comes as no surprise that Microsoft has seen such success with Xbox Cloud Gaming so far. The service works fairly well, and is widely available. Whether it’s through a console, smartphone, or computer, it’s a similar experience that’s affordable and mostly seamless.

The surprising bit from this stat, if anything, is that Microsoft lags behind Nvidia on its player count. While there’s surely some wiggle room in how these stats were counted, it seems clear that GeForce Now has more players at this time, probably due to its looser restrictions on countries, and its free service tier.

But this only goes to remind us of where Stadia stands. Google has been silent from day one regarding any meaningful usage statistics, and the little tidbits we’ve heard are not exactly promising. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Stadia isn’t playing in the same ballpark as Xbox Cloud Gaming but, frankly, that’s incredibly unlikely. I’d love to see Stadia stats at this point, and I’d love for them to prove me wrong. But…