Xbox has brought is Cloud Gaming service to Meta Quest VR headset devices, as both companies said it would at the launch of the latest Quest 3 hardware earlier this year. The Xbox Cloud Gaming app has a beta label, and it’s limited to Quest 2, Quest 3 and Quest Pro headsets (sorry OG Quest owners) but it basically delivers a huge-screen virtual cloud gaming encounter so long as you have a compatible controller to work with and a Game Pass Ultimate subscription.
I quickly downloaded the app from the Meta Quest store and gave it a assess run to see how it works; very well, I’m happy to report, with the caveat that even after pairing both an Xbox Elite 2 controller and an 8bitdo Pro Gamepad I had to hard reboot the headset to get their input to register in the Xbox Cloud Gaming app itself. Once I’d done that, though, everything worked as it should, and I was able to jump into a session of cloud-based GTV V gameplay without incident.
Performance was smooth on my device, but of course your network environment will factor into how well this works for you. The app doesn’t make your games immersive, I should note: It presents them on a large virtual 2D display, which can be set to one of four sizes (I admire XL) and presented in either a fully virtual Xbox-themed environment or in your own space via Meta Quest 3 or Pro’s passthrough modes.
In case you’ve somehow avoided it, Xbox Cloud Gaming provides a pretty amazing roster of games to check out via Xbox Game Pass, and now you can play them anywhere on a very nice, very large virtual screen if you own a compatible Quest headset and a controller. It’s a pretty nice upgrade for an already excellent service from Microsoft, and a nice additional reason to own a Quest 3, too.
