Xbox Cloud Gaming heading to the Meta Quest

Microsoft is bringing Xbox Cloud Gaming to Meta’s Quest VR platform. The two companies announced the partnership at Meta’s Connect event on Tuesday but didn’t announce a release date.

With Xbox Cloud Gaming, “You’ll be able to play 2D games with your Xbox controller projected on a massive screen on Quest,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during the event’s keynote.

You won’t suddenly be able to play Halo Infinite as a VR-native game, but the app could make for a more immersive experience while playing any of the hundreds of games in the vast Xbox Cloud Gaming library since you’ll be seeing your game on a big virtual screen. (And it gives you another way to play your games if someone else is hogging the living room TV.) It’s also a way for Microsoft to keep growing in cloud gaming, which it almost certainly wants to push further into, given that Google Stadia will soon be off the board.

Meta and Microsoft are also working on better integration of the Quest and many Microsoft platforms, including the Microsoft Teams workplace chat app as well as the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity apps.