Playing games over the internet, streamed to my Pixel 3A XL with a Razer Kishi gamepad wrapped around it, feels pretty magical — along the lines of playing Nintendo Switch for the first time.
It's not quite as comfortable as using an actual Xbox gamepad connected to an Xbox that's broadcast to my TV, but it's a pretty amazing compromise considering I can sit on my balcony and play Xbox games. Better still: Since my save data is connected to the cloud, I can pick up games exactly where I left off, make progress, and return to them later on console with that progress recorded.
It's the video game equivalent of starting an episode of "Schitt's Creek" on my phone, pausing it, and finishing the episode on my TV later on exactly where I left off.
Notably, all of this costs exactly zero dollars more than the existing cost of Xbox Game Pass. So when it stutters, which it does occasionally, I don't mind too much. When the graphics are a little rough for a few moments, which also happens sometimes, I'm not that concerned.
And none of these issues are so persistent as to make the service unusable, though they do make me think twice about which games I stream. Fighting games, for example, are particularly impacted by input lag, and I wouldn't want to play a competitive online shooter over a video game streaming service.
But most of the time, playing "Spiritfarer" or "Lonely Mountains Downhill" or "Forza Horizon 4," I was just impressed that I could play the game on phone with a gamepad wherever I chose.