Xbox Users Can Now Play Some Steam Games

GeForce Now is due to arrive in Australia very shortly, so here’s a fun little tip for anyone who wants to dabble in it: there’s way to stream PC games to your Xbox through Microsoft Edge.

A new version of the Microsoft Edge browser has been added for Xbox users on the Xbox Insider program. Apart from the obvious ramifications — Xbox users really like porn, you know — it means Xbox users can access a whole bunch of browser-based services that weren’t available before.

And some of those might open up possibilities that Xbox or its partners hadn’t wholly considered. Like, for instance, the ability to stream a whole bunch of PC games through Steam via GeForce Now.

YouTuber Joe Chip, who had access to the Xbox Insider build and GeForce Now, outlined how to get all of it working in a video below. It’s far from a perfect experience: Edge will occasionally crash, some keyboard and mouse inputs won’t be recognised, and some controller inputs won’t always be recognised.

So there’s a bit of trial and error. The video below eventually got Wreckfest going, but the benefit of GeForce Now is the thousands of Steam games that can be streamed to your Xbox that wouldn’t be available otherwise.

Sure, it’s janky and definitely not the ideal way to play a lot of games. But it does open a lot of interesting possibilities, especially for Xbox Series S users. Since Steam accounts are free, and Steam still gets a ton of indies that aren’t always released or immediately brought over to consoles, this could be a fun trial.

Want to play Death Stranding or Horizon: Zero Dawn on your not-Sony approved console? Well, now you can. You might even be able to play Bloodborne by running PlayStation Now through Edge as well. But the more practical application will be when GeForce Now finally launches in Australia, which Perth ISP Pentanet is working on.

GeForce Now, after all, has a free tier. But if you wanted to spend half an hour playing, say, Loop Hero or, fuck, DOTA 2 on your Xbox, that’s actually totally viable. (If the Xbox parses mouse and keyboard inputs properly.)

The news is nicely timed for Xbox users, who are already getting Auto HDR and FPS Boost settings in a firmware update next week. And while adding a second subscription service to play Steam games was something most users were asking for, I can absolutely foresee people giving it a go.