Xbox confirms over 10% of in-game hours come from Cloud Gaming

In a recent interview, Microsoft confirmed that the number of hours played on the cloud versus elsewhere is significant, making up at least 10% of the total hours played in Xbox games.

Xbox Cloud Gaming is one of the newest services on the block in a market that’s incredibly infantile. Cloud gaming has only really started to grab attention, and even still, it can be difficult for some companies to gain attention as a destination for those who want to play their favorite titles via streaming.

That hasn’t stopped Microsoft, as Xbox Game Pass Ultimate ads are everywhere in sight, it seems. A large number of gaming products that launched in the last year have included vouchers for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which acts as a way to get people to try out the cloud service. Along with that, the Microsoft service has teamed up with GeForce Now to offer a ton of games through the larger operation’s gaming interface.

It seems as though that exposure has worked to increase traffic through Xbox Game Pass. A recent interview with Game File notes that Xbox’s Phil Spencer stated that within the total number of hours played in Xbox games, cloud gaming makes up a “double-digit” percentage. This means that at least 10% of hours played were in the cloud.

When I’m looking at the numbers and I’m looking at the hours played on cloud, and it’s now in like the double digits, all up, percent of the overall Xbox hours played are people playing on cloud..We’re finding more people playing on smart TVs and Chromebooks and Android tablets

If you think about how many hours Xbox’s catalog of games could garner across PC and console, that’s possibly a staggering number. It points to a significant increase in cloud traffic over the past year.

Spencer notes that the recent growth the company has seen comes from regions where console gaming is in the minority. The stated outlets for accessing these games are Chromebooks, Android tablets, and TVs. The latter is likely a product of Xbox’s partnership with Samsung’s Gaming Hub program, which puts the service at the forefront with no other devices needed. The epitome of easy access.

This is an overall positive for cloud gaming as a whole. It’s not a perfect solution for gaming, but a big push will help Xbox and other platforms improve their offerings to polish the experience further.