A Digital Foundry analysis has found that PS5 cloud streaming outperforms Microsoft xCloud in a number of aspects. In fact, the only department in which xCloud surpasses PS5 streaming is latency, and that’s because Microsoft’s service is streaming Series S versions of games rather than their superior Series X counterparts.
How PS5 cloud streaming outperforms Microsoft xCloud
Digital Foundry notes that performance wise, games streamed on the PS5 mostly closely represent locally installed games, but that’s not the case when it comes to xCloud. Those streaming games on the Xbox Series X are getting somewhat of a downgraded version that’s more reprentative of the Series S.
Games streamed on the PS5 also offer better resolution and higher bitrate albeit with inferior latency compared to the xCloud. “Between the use of PS5-grade hardware server-side, the higher bitrate and resolution, PlayStation Plus presents its catalogue at a quality level that’s much closer to justifying that Premium label – even if it’s behind Xbox in terms of latency,” Digital Foundry concludes.
Digital Foundry also notes that both PS5 streaming and Microsoft xCloud come with a similar price tag but Sony offers 851 games compared to Microsoft’s 402 games. 201 out of Sony’s 851 games are PS5 titles.
