GTA V appears to be increasing Xbox cloud gaming wait times due to its immense popularity. GTA 5 and GTA Online once again made their way back into Xbox Game Pass last month. Following a couple of previous stints, Rockstar have put the blockbuster back into Microsoft’s subscription service.
Since July 5th 2023, Xbox Game Pass members have been able to play Grand Theft Auto V and GTA Online without owning them digitally. This includes the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S versions of Grand Theft Auto V. This is a great chance for anyone who upgraded to the Xbox Series X|S consoles to checked out the new versions of GTA V featuring ray tracing.
On top of that, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members are able to play the game in the cloud on any device that supports Xbox Cloud Streaming. For example, you’ll be able to play GTA V or GTA Online on your phone wherever you have an internet connection.
However, many gamers have noticed some massive queue times when logging onto Xbox Cloud Gaming in the last few weeks. The typical experience for many months now has been select the game you want to stream and you’ll be playing within a couple of minutes.
This has since changed. Users have reported exceptionally long wait times in a queue of upwards of an hour. From our own personal experience, it used to take around 60 second but did see it be around 20 minutes twice.
This is highly unusual and down to many people playing and taking up the Xbox’s in the servers. According to Windows Central, this previously happened when GTA V was introduced to Game Pass last time.
Given how popular GTA V is and that Xbox Cloud Gaming is popular in certain regions, this is no surprise. Windows Central does note though it could also down to a few other factors. These include Microsoft sharing its Xbox servers to help power AI applications such as Bing’s ChatGPT.
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