Xbox Cloud Gaming looks worse on Linux — here’s why it’s bad and how to fix it
Anyone who’s tried the Xbox Cloud Gaming beta on Linux (which is likely a small crowd, I know) may have noticed that the image quality is a little rough, even by cloud gaming standards. Now, though, community members have found a quick workaround to get better image quality, and we have an official explanation for why the hack works and why the problem exists in the first place.
On Monday, Reddit user Spiritual-Ad2806 posted on the Xcloud subreddit, saying that they were able to trick the Xbox service into showing them a better quality stream on Linux by making it think it was running on Windows. Doing that is relatively simple; they used an Edge extension to change their user agent, which is essentially a string of text that tells websites what browser you’re using, as well as various other pieces of info about your system. When they switched to a user agent that told sites they were running on Windows 10 instead of Ubuntu or Manjaro, they got a noticeably better picture.
I tried this out for myself using Linux Mint and this browser extension (though I can’t completely vouch for its safety, so proceed with caution), and it totally worked. The differences, which you can see an example of above, can be subtle depending on what game you’re playing, but I’d consider the workaround mandatory if I was going to be playing any game with any amount of text.
As for why this works, Jordan Cohen, one of the leads on the xCloud project, offered an explanation on the Linux_Gaming subreddit. According to his comment, Linux isn’t officially supported by Xbox Cloud Gaming, so it “reverts to a default resolution and bit rate” that should work on most devices. Cohen says that the team decided to look at the user agent instead of trying to
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