That’s why the new Xbox Cloud Gaming PWA for Chromebooks is such a big upgrade

Over the past two years I’ve had the opportunity to test most game streaming services on a selection of great Chromebooks. While many of these streaming services are still growing, I’ve had the opportunity to watch them grow with incremental improvements. That means I’m familiar with the likes of Luna, GeForce, and even Stadia along with Xbox Cloud Gaming. But Xbox Cloud Gaming has been in beta the whole time, which never looked good on higher resolution screens since it was locked to 720p.

Well, there’s a new PWA for Xbox Cloud Gaming bringing support for Chromebooks, just in time for Google’s foray into game streaming laptops, and things have improved a lot the last time I checked out the Xbox Cloud Gaming beta tried service. So let’s dive in and see what’s new.

What’s new in Xbox Cloud Gaming

First of all, 1080p support is finally available, so thanks to the new PWA we’re no longer stuck streaming games at 720p. I can say things are looking a lot clearer when streaming via the new PWA. While the new 1080p support is nice, it doesn’t quite match NVIDIA’s 3080 tier for GeForce Now, which offers a 4K stream and high framerates. Xbox Cloud Gaming is more of an add-on service as it’s hooked up to a Game Pass sub, so raw performance doesn’t seem to be the goal right now. But hey, a jump from 720p to 1080p is nothing to complain about and certainly a welcome addition.

What’s particularly nice about the new 1080p support is that the latency feels a lot better too. So despite the resolution boost, which is more demanding when streaming, things stream pretty smoothly with just a few hiccups here and there.

A res bump is not the only innovation. Stability improvements also made the cut. So far I haven’t encountered any of the issues I had testing Xbox Cloud Gaming a few months ago, like oddities with flipping a Chromebook screen that places the navigation bar above the full-screen window, or warnings about network issues.

How does Xbox Cloud Gaming’s new PWA compare to the competition?

Pretty good to be honest. Before the recent improvements with the new PWA, I would have placed Xbox Cloud Gaming at the bottom of the pack, behind GeForce Now, Luna, and Stadia. But now that some much-needed improvements have been made, streams at 1080p are clear and with latency on par with NVIDIA and Amazon. While some latency is noticeable in certain games and on certain networks, this is the nature of streaming. So the mileage will vary, but in my case it’s clear that improvements have been made. Xbox cloud gaming is finally competing with the big boys in terms of image quality and smooth streams.

So if you were hoping Microsoft would improve the beta for Xbox cloud gaming, now is the time to try it out on Chromebooks. This comes in handy as Google is partnering with Acer, Asus and Lenovo to launch several gaming Chromebooks. While I wasn’t able to test how Xbox Cloud Gaming looks on a 16:10 Chromebook, it still raises the question of Xbox Cloud Gaming on the 16:10 screen that Acer and Lenovo use in their gaming Chromebooks , is displayed in letterbox or not. Apparently NVIDIA has addressed this issue and announced a special tier only for Chromebooks that stream at 1600p at 120 fps. But it remains to be seen whether Amazon or Microsoft will offer something similar.

With healthy competition comes improvements for consumers

Over the past year or so, Microsoft has felt like it’s dragging its feet with Xbox Cloud Gaming, where Game Pass has tended to take most of the focus as Xbox Cloud Gaming has been stuck in perpetual beta. While I think the long beta is a smart move to keep consumer expectations up (unlike Google over-promising and under-delivering with Stadia), 720p streams never really cut it for me, even if it did meant an acceptable latency.

Microsoft hasn’t forgotten about Xbox Cloud Gaming, perhaps thanks to Google’s recent foray into selling us gaming Chromebooks. Game streaming is on the rise and the competition is heating up, with NVIDIA making waves with its support for high frame rates. That said, Microsoft is also in it for the long haul, so it’s fantastic to see broader support on Chromebooks with an official Xbox Cloud Gaming PWA that brings some impressive improvements.

So if you’d like to try the new PWA, navigate to the Xbox Cloud Gaming website in your Chrome browser on your favorite Chromebook, click the three-dot menu in the top-right corner, then select Install and Xbox Cloud Gaming the one from PWA is installed on your Chromebook to behave similar to a native app. Best of all, Microsoft is offering a few free games, so you don’t need to subscribe to Game Pass to quickly jump into a round of Fortnite and see what the new 1080p support looks like. So folks, Xbox Cloud Gaming is finally a great way to play on Chromebooks, and it’s not even out of beta yet.