[Guide] XCloud working/playable from India

VPN
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PSA: XCloud now works very well from India, but only if you follow the details given below (refer what I call MAGIC to get it work perfectly/best possible from your browser using the specific User Agent String I have shared below) … and yes it works significantly better than what you may have tried earlier and/or dismissed XCloud as a viable gaming option

Trying to keep it simple, yet detailed so everyone can follow if interested. XCloud (Microsoft just calls it XBox Cloud Gaming Beta now) worked earlier too from India but poorly and not worth posting about, but finally sharing the steps here today because a Redditor on r/xcloud suddenly shared something which worked a little bit like magic (my post so my whatever words I wish to use) and made the experience a lot better (Magic mentioned at the end since I saved the best for the last, feel free to scroll down. It’s also confirmed by other Redditors from this subreddit that it actually works. Maybe this will help some folks who don’t have a gaming device. I trust for them a decently playable game is better than no game, and this opens up opportunities to play even AAA games with a decently priced subscription given the current 8 months offer. Some people may just wish to try Microsoft exclusive games. You may even want to check out a game quickly without bothering to take time to download and install it.

What you need

  • Game Pass Ultimate Subscription (GPU) (People may have the 3y or 32 months or current 8 months deal or even 1 month)
  • PC (Potato or otherwise) or an Android Phone (maybe Ipads etc work too)
  • A Controller (unless you want to try using the mobile touch interface.
    You probably can also use a Keyboard and Mouse emulated as a Controller using software like reWASD. There is also this Chrome Plugin which may work out for you but I haven’t tried it
    https://idolize.github.io/xcloud-keyboard-mouse/
    A Controller is needed because XCloud games run on XBox Series X blades and not on PC VMs unlike GeForce Now which work with Keyboard + Mouse). XBox Controllers or DualShock or ideally even generic controllers may work with software to emulate as Xbox controller if really needed.
  • VPN (just need it momentarily to bypass Geo restrictions. A browser based extension like TunnelBear free works best since you can choose locations like Korea or Japan which are closest geographically. Otherwise free Proton VPN works great to since it has free Japan servers. Of course you can try using Free WindScribe VPN to connect to USA, UK, Netherlands etc but I think performance will change depending on Server distance). You can install VPN on your browser, PC, or your phone or use your phone with VPN tethered to your PC.
  • Decent Internet - XCloud apparently goes to max 15mbps in supported regions, so I suppose if you have decent internet, this should work for you fine. The stream I am getting surely doesn’t look to be higher than 4-5mbps. I think its taking around 2GB of data per hour from my testing, so the streaming quality isn’t the best yet. There are no options to tweak the quality unfortunately.
    Wired connectivity will be best or 5ghz wifi over 2.4ghz will obviously be better.
  • A reasonable tolerance. This is obviously not as good as playing locally. If you have a gaming device, no one is saying you should stop using it. And do note that currently GeForce now is working better, but XCloud seems to have improved a lot in recent months, so it can only become better going ahead. Being in an unsupported region can also be a little glitchy. The service is also in Beta, so remember that.

Where all XCloud Works from what I have tried and my experience (I have been testing a lot since I grabbed the 32 months GPU deal). I cannot quantify quality and latency because there are no stats provided by the app. Playable for me may not be to your high standards, but I have been able to play games like Nier Automata, Just Cause 4 even a bit of Forza Horizon, though steering is harder.

  • Mobile devices such as Android using the GamePass App - Good enough quality on small screen and playable latency. VPN needed before loading the app. Close VPN before you start playing. I assume 720p with fair compression. Pair your controller using bluetoooth/wire or use touch.
  • xbox.com/play - PC with Chromium based browsers like Edge, Chrome etc (Quality is the best, but lots of stutters and high latency, unless you apply the Magic mentioned towards the end). Stream looks like 1080p or sometimes 720p, I think it automatically adjusts but of course much higher compression than GeForce Now). You will not get GeForce Now quality. You can enable the VPN anytime and browse to xbox.com/play or perhaps https://www.xbox.com/en-US/play. Note that the en-US in the URL doesn’t matter since its just for localization. The underlying server will be mostly based on your VPN location. It’s hard to tell where you connect to, but apparently one can sniff UDP packets using Wireshark and look up the destination IP to confirm the region. However, say I have used a Japan VPN, I see brief Japanese text while starting some games while it sync my profile (look at the button which should say Cancel below the sync progress bar, but will show regional text instead of Cancel. I have seen based on Server load you may get connected to some other region than the one you have used VPN for. Your experience may change due to that. You can try later too and hope you get connected to the VPN region you have chosen).That’s good enough for me. Once the page loads and you see a list of games, you can disconnect the VPN. This detects my DS4 natively over wireless/bluetooth or you can also use emulators like DS4Windows to get your controller recognized as a Xbox 360 controller.
  • Windows PC using the XBox App - Bad resolution and compression but playable latency. Hardest to get this to work since it aggressively detects your region. You need to disable all Xbox related items from your Startup (Task Manager → Start Up tab). Change your Windows Region setting to a supported country like Japan. Reboot your machine. Enable your VPN before you even start the App. Then Load the App, go to the Cloud tab. If it shows region supported you can turn off your VPN before playing the game. If the App detects an unsupported region again, you may need to restart your machine again or log out and login with VPN connected. This also doesn’t detect my DS4 till I use an emulator like DS4Windows to mimic an Xbox 360 controller.
  • Android TV - The Mobile APK can be sideloaded, but understandably you are getting the mobile quality on a big device now. VPN usage same as any other Android device. Paired my DS4 easily using Bluetooth.
  • Linux machine with Chrome based browser. This is where the magic comes from and usable even on Windows. Not tried personally since I don’t have a Linux machine.

NOW THE MAGIC which makes a Huge Difference

A redditor from r/xcloud made a post and asked others for their opinions. So it turns out that XClould apparently works much better over the browser from Linux for some reason, however he also found out that simply changing the browser User Agent String from even Windows Chrome (and Edge which is also Chromium based) is making a huge difference.

He shared the browser User Agent String from Linux Mint which I tried with Edge and saw the huge difference. I finally got the reasonable quality from the Browser Stream and the low Latency of the Android/XBox App. The browser user agent string (you need the entire text in bold): Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/95.0.4638.54 Safari/537.36

It’s easy to change the browser string. Open Edge. Press F12 to Open DevTools. Control + Shift + P to open the command line. Type Network Conditions, choose Show Network conditions, and select Enter to open the Network conditions tool. Under user agent unselect “Use Browser Agent” . In the dropdown choose custom and paste in the above user agent string. As long as the Dev Tools is open, the User Agent string will remain applied (on that tab only, so don’t start playing on a new browser tab). Close Dev Tools to go back to edge default.

You can try out the user agent switch for yourself and see the remarkable difference it makes. You don’t even have to refresh the page. Just close and start a game with the user agent change made or not and see.

You may have to dock the developer tools to a floating window in case you are unable to make the game stream become full screen. Also you can try using browser extensions to change user agents but if they don’t work out perfectly on the website, you will not see the benefits. So best to try with developer tools first. You need to be very sure the user agent change has really applied to your browser tab. To double check Google what’s my user agent, and confirm that you can actually see the Linux user agent. You can even use command line parameters to start the browser with a specific user agent.

I played several hours yesterday by connecting my Laptop to my 55 inch TV using this method. Of course it doesn’t look great but I still found it OK, but on a smaller screen I think it will be good. However I have trying to get it to work better for more than a week now, and this finally worked.

In conclusion

Now I don’t know why streaming is working better on Linux browsers and it is and we can certainly take advantage of that by just using a Linux browser user agent string. Hoping XCloud just becomes better overall sooner than later. I am a huge fan of the concept of cloud gaming and see if as a perfectly viable alternative to owning hardware in the future.

Thanks for reading through if you did. I just wanted to share with my community in an attempt to help fellow gamers to either try out XCloud or in case they are getting frustrated with their Potato devices. GPU ultimate pricing is good in India right now especially considering it has some nice games. 8 months of GamePass ultimate for 800 INR is also a steal.

If you have any tips or found something which works even better, let me know and I can update in this summary.

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It all started when reddit decided to introduce an insane api pricing model, even more derranged than twitter’s. Many of us who use third-party apps that have been around since before Reddit had a mobile presence, were hoping for a chance for them to negotiate with reddit. They already offer a superior user experience not only for regular users and moderators but also for a significant number of disabled and blind users.

Unfortunately, reddit chose not to engage in any negotiations and instead doubled down on the pricing, determined to eliminate these apps altogether. The CEO made public statements that were far from truthful, tried to spin the situation in their favor, disregarding the needs and desires of the user base. Naturally, it lead to protests across the site involving more than 8,000 subreddits going private/restricted.

The admins then started forcefully ending these protests, suppressing the voices of those who were speaking up against these changes. They claim to be “keeping it open” while going against its core, the users, and closing down the apps they use. On July 1st, as the API pricing goes live, it shuts down all third party apps and it feels like the beginning of the slow death of Reddit as we know it.

It is understandable that not everyone may share the same level of concern about this issue, but please take a moment to listen and observe. It has become clear that Reddit’s priorities lie primarily in their profits and removing any obstacles in their path to more profits. They started with old reddit, now they are targeting the apps. What will they come for next?

In the meantime, we invite you to join our Discord server, where there is a dedicated channel for laptop discussions that you can mute: IndianGaming

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It really works people, just have to be patient about frequent lags once in a while but you can actually play something through browser with reasonable quality and latency.

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Give this man a cookie.

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Great post op. I guess you forgot to mention that 5ghz provides a bette experience when compared to 2.4ghz.

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Does it work on the xbox game pass app? Or did you only try it in the browser?

In my case , the game opens but the left right controls doesn’t work

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Adding to this: if you own any xbox and have gamepass ultimate you just need to change your location on your xbox to USA or any country that supports xcloud and you can start steaming through your xbox app on your desktop without vpn.

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i got stadia this way , but the game stops after 15mins -_-

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Thanks it works brilliantly for me. I have a gaming pc but this saves so much time on downloading games. I am using NordVPN btw

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Hey so pc browsers, anything for Android?

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is the 32 months thing still working?

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It works on edge, good job man. Any way for fixing the quality on the android Xbox ultimate app??

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This post needs to be higher. This works so much better than how it used to be. Thanks man. Great work.

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I can’t get a video output when connecting to Korean servers only game audio is coming. Which is the fastest server you find?

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Do I need to change my windows 10 to Linux or i can do it in Windows 10 ??

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Do I need to change from windows 10 to Linux or i can use it in windows 10 ?

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its stuttering for me every 5-7 minutes. Did everything u told me and checked by google my user agent. Does it sutters for anyoen else too?. Played GTA San andreas frames were skipping alot. I got airtel broadband 250 up and down

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In my android phone, I’m able to play on game pass app without using vpn! Strange?
Just played forza horizon 5. Latency was there but it’s not too bad.
But tried on chrome desktop, the game didn’t even launch.

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By mbps you mean MBps or Mbps?

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Awesome man. This still works. I have a high end desktop PC, so didn’t try till now. But now I am able to play in my living room with just my low end laptop connected to TV. So I can use this for games where I don’t care much for graphics.