If you are a person who plays video games on an Xbox, Microsoft's video game console, then you may have been excited about the launch of the company's xCloud game streaming service. It makes it possible to stream your video game library, including content from Microsoft's Game Pass subscription service, directly from the cloud. So you don't need to be connected to your Wi-Fi network at home to play games on your Android smartphone or tablet.

It's a great service, in theory, and something Microsoft has been working on for years. It's available now for Android devices, but it's not yet available for iOS devices. Microsoft is apparently working on that, in an effort to avoid Apple's restrictive App Store guidelines, but that won't see the light of day until sometime in 2021 at the earliest.

The question I have is, are you actually using it?

As I mentioned above, Microsoft has had this goal of cloud-based gaming for quite some time. The company was talking about it, sometimes in abstract terms, about being able to just pick up a Windows Phone-based device and start playing an Xbox game on it. You could start a game on your console, leave the house and then continue the adventure on your mobile device. It was a dream, a goal, that I absolutely loved the sound of, and it was one of the (many) reasons I enjoyed Windows Phone so much. That potential was real, and I wanted Microsoft to see it through.

Now that cloud gaming is a reality, I can safely say that I've never actually wanted to use it. Times have changed quite a bit, obviously, and those moments I used to have where I could actually take advantage of a cloud-based game streaming service are few and far between. However, just being able to stream a game to my iPad from the Xbox or PlayStation while on my Wi-Fi network is just fine for me for the most part.

But even if I have moved out of the target audience for this feature, I know that's not the case for a lot of gamers out there, whether they consider themselves a casual player or not. Which is why I'm curious to know if Microsoft's xCloud has become one of your favorite new services on your device. And if you're on iOS, are you hoping Microsoft launches the service sooner rather than later? Let me know!