As both companies promised with the debut of the newest Quest 3 gear earlier this year, Xbox has introduced its Cloud Gaming service to Meta Quest VR headset devices. The Xbox Cloud Gaming software is still in beta, and it’s only available for Quest 2, Quest 3, and Quest Pro headsets (sorry, OG Quest users), but it effectively gives a huge-screen virtual cloud gaming experience as long as you have a compatible controller and a Game Pass Ultimate subscription.
I quickly downloaded the app from the Meta Quest store and gave it a test run to see how it works. I’m happy to report that it works very well, with the caveat that even after pairing both an Xbox Elite 2 controller and an 8-bit Pro Gamepad, I had to hard reboot the headset to get their input to register in the Xbox Cloud Gaming app itself. But after I’d done that, everything was fine, and I was able to get right into a session of cloud-based GTV V gaming.
Performance was seamless on my device, but your network conditions will obviously influence how well this works for you. I should point out that the program does not make your games immersive; it just displays them on a huge virtual 2D display that can be set to one of four sizes (I like XL) and shown in either a completely virtual Xbox-themed environment or in your own area using Meta Quest 3 or Pro’s passthrough modes.
If you haven’t already, Xbox Cloud Gaming offers a fairly incredible roster of titles to try out via Xbox Game Pass, and you can now play them anywhere on a very lovely, very huge virtual screen, provided you possess a compatible Quest headset and a controller. It’s a lovely addition to Microsoft’s already-excellent service, as well as another incentive to acquire a Quest 3.
