The cloud gaming dream is dying - XBOX places limits on XBOX Cloud Gaming
4 Sep 2026 at 7:46 am UTC | Last updated: 4 Sep 2026 at 7:46 am UTC By Liam Squires-HandCloud gaming always seems like it's just a few years away from becoming a real reality doesn't it? But no, it's never really going…
By Liam Squires-Hand
Cloud gaming always seems like it's just a few years away from becoming a real reality doesn't it? But no, it's never really going to take over like this. We've seen OnLive, Stadia and others come and go - and NVIDIA GeForce NOW introduced limits some time ago. Now, Microsoft / XBOX are also introducing some pretty harsh limits to their service too.
Announced in a blog post, Microsoft said that all subscribers will now be forced into these monthly limits:
- Game Pass Ultimate: 15 hours a month.
- Game Pass Premium: 10 hours a month.
- Game Pass Essential: 5 hours a month.
Yes, you are reading that correctly, a month.
A bit of an own-goal here, as they said it will " impact 4% of Game Pass subscribers" - meaning, XBOX Cloud Gaming is incredibly unpopular. Ouch. Once your hours are used up, you can pay extra to buy more hours through their store, but they didn't actually say the prices and simply mentioned they'll be sharing more before the changes come into effect sometime in November.
One additional major change is coming - you will be able to buy cloud gaming time without subscribing to Game Pass. Perhaps that might make it more approachable.
As for why they're making these changes? They said "the cost of providing cloud gaming grows as more people use it and play for longer" and introducing limits "allows us to keep offering the service while continuing to invest in its reliability and performance".
Maybe, just maybe, if they weren't also forcing AI everywhere and paying out billions for it, then hardware everywhere might not be so expensive huh?
🌐 External Sources: news.xbox.com Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com. Tags: Cloud Gaming, Misc, XBOX 18 Likes Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:Epic Games Store will get a Linux version sometime "soon"SteamOS 3.8.25 Beta has firmware updates for Steam Machine, wider handheld support, Steam Frame Wireless Adapter supportNVIDIA GeForce NOW cloud gaming for Linux levels up and leaves BetaFramework Laptop 12 gets Fedora KDE Linux on pre-builts, along with new Intel Core Series 3 processors All posts need to follow our rules. Please hit the Report Flag icon on any post that breaks the rules or contains illegal / harmful content. Readers can also email us for any issues or concerns.