Xbox Game Pass is, by far, the best deal in gaming, at least since the price cut earlier this year. While the future of the service remains a bit of a mystery with rumors swirling about potential transformations, I’ve always thought it was a shame that mobile users couldn’t play at least some Game Pass games natively on their phones. Heaven knows it would have been an amazing selling point for Windows Phone, but I digress.
Those on Android, and even iPhone, have had to rely on Xbox Cloud Gaming. We all know that service got quite the considerable nerf, no longer providing unlimited hours of play. Instead, Ultimate members are allotted just 15 hours maximum, with the ability to purchase additional hours starting at $3.99 for 10 hours.
Now, whilst iOS users are out of luck, at least for now, Android can now natively play Xbox Game Pass PC games thanks to the latest DroidDeck update. For now, the feature is in testing, but I’m rather impressed. In fact, we’re seeing a lot of things like this crop up lately; not long ago, we also got Xbox’s PC Game Pass on Steam Deck, thanks to Xodus Nexus, or heck, we even got Xbox One games running on iPhone.
How well do Xbox Game Pass PC games run on Android?
Performance-wise, having looked into it, you can expect pretty decent results, depending on the game, of course. Hollow Knight: Silksong runs at over 100 FPS on a device like the Ayn Thor, and Minecraft Dungeons 2 is hitting 30 to 40 FPS.
It’s still early days, with DroidDeck (which you can check out yourself on GitHub) only on version 0.6.0, but the app itself is coming along nicely. Beyond Game Pass support, you get access to Steam, Epic Games, GOG, Amazon Games, and even itch.io, making it pretty feature-rich.
I find this all extremely cool. I think playing these games on a handheld that actually fits in your pocket, instead of something that requires a backpack, is the future of portable gaming. As much as I enjoy my Xbox Ally X, I’d rather have games on something that, to me, feels like a handheld the way a Nintendo DS or PSP used to.
Maybe that’s just me, though. Let me know your thoughts on DroidDeck and Game Pass PC games on Android in the comments, and be sure to take part in our poll below.
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