Xbox Project xCloud Now Supports Touch Controls

August 3, 2020 at 4:18pm
By Jason Stettner

While this feature was outlined at GDC quite awhile back, touch controls have now officially been integrated into Xbox Project xCloud. The seemingly first game to support this feature is Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. If you’re loading the game, the title will not require a controller to play it.

You can straight up just interact via touch with the layout being shown below. This presents a fairly straight forward set of controls in order handle the title, and they did feel generally solid to use. This feature may become a sort of standard on the platform, or done on a case by case basis.

It is worth noting that the screenshot above was taken on the Google Pixel 4, and that only the Xbox Game Streaming app on Android currently supports this. This is due to the IOS version being locked to just having Halo: The Master Chief Collection at the current point in time.

It’ll be interesting to see how many games support this feature, or if it expands being offered with just general touch icons. It could very well just be in a testing phase prior to rolling out for general development use.

It’s quite an interesting time to be able to play such a high quality experience like this on a mobile device, while it’s being streamed and without a controller. It’ll be neat to see how this input option differs across various games. That’s all for now, read our review of the excellent game below or check out the platform hub for further coverage.

Read our Hellblade Review
View our Xbox Hub