Microsoft and Amazon announced Thursday that they are partnering to bring the Xbox gaming app to two models of Fire TV devices in July.
This allows Xbox Game Pass subscribers on the Ultimate tier to play Xbox games on their TVs via cloud streaming, with no console required.
At time of writing, the Xbox app will only be compatible with two specific models of the Fire TV Stick: last year’s 4K and the 4K Max. Users will also need a Bluetooth-compatible controller, such as Amazon’s Luna gamepad.
The compatible Fire sticks start at $49.99, while the right kind of gamepads start around $30 and a month of Game Pass Ultimate is $16.99. It’s not inexpensive, but that’s still significantly less money than simply buying an Xbox.
It’s worth noting that not everything on Game Pass is accessible via the cloud. Many of the most popular titles on the service can be played via streaming, such as Starfield, Sea of Thieves, Palworld, and the campaign mode for Halo Infinite, but you don’t get access to the full library.
The initial announcement makes sure to emphasize that several games in the Fallout series – Fallout 3, 4, New Vegas, and 76 – are available for cloud streaming via Game Pass. This ties into a recent groundswell of interest in the franchise, which was spurred by the success of the live-action “Fallout” series that aired in April on Amazon Prime.
“Fallout’s” popularity seems to have taken both Amazon and Microsoft by surprise, as there wasn’t much in the way of cross-promotion ready to go at the series’ launch. It did lead to a funny moment in mid-April, however, when transmedia synergy put both 2015’s Fallout 4 and the ongoing game-as-a-service Fallout 76 into the top 25 best-sellers list on the PlayStation store. At that point, journalists noted that, technically, Microsoft had more first-party games in the PlayStation Store’s top 25 than Sony.
That illustrates how, in 2024, Microsoft and Xbox don’t have any traditional competitors. Instead, it’s redefined rival companies’ platforms, such as the PlayStation 5 and now Amazon’s media ecosystem, as opportunities. If there’s a console war to speak of right now, much of it is shadowboxing.
