

If you remain inactive for too long, the session will automatically exit, otherwise you can play for hours (some users report a stream ending after four or five hours). There’s an ever-so-slight delay for controller inputs being sent to the Xbox streaming console and those inputs reflected on your screen. Assuming you have a stable connection and low latency, controller inputs are sent to the streaming Xbox console as the game downloads.

In my tests, it takes around 10 seconds to load a game, which means you’re looking at the typical game intro videos before hitting the main menu. When you choose a game to play on Xbox Cloud Gaming, it sends a request to start the game on an available Xbox console that’s at the nearest Microsoft Azure server stack. Xbox Cloud Gaming works a lot like streaming video with some extra steps.
