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Testing multiplayer scenarios usually involves managing multiple dev kit consoles. In this topic we’ll discuss how you can best use XBOX Manager to test multiplayer scenarios on remote dev kits.

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Large group scenarios (5 or more consoles)

When you have five or more consoles, XBOX Manager is mostly used for monitoring the state of each console. For example, you may want to make sure that your game is started on each console and is in a state that is ready to join a multiplayer game. You may also want to monitor if the game crashes or freezes on a particular dev kit. To enable this scenario in XBOX Manager, do the following:
  1. Make sure that all of the consoles you want to monitor have been added to XBOX Manager. If any consoles are missing, click the Add a Console button to add them.
  2. Click the Create a Group button to open the Create a group dialog.
  3. Select all the consoles that you want in the group, give the group a name, and click the Create button.
  4. On the left pane, under GROUPS, select the group.
  5. Switch to the Remote Control tab to see video streams from all of the consoles.
Remarks:
  • You are limited to 4 consoles to display in High FPS mode, the rest of the console thumbnails will use Low FPS mode, which limits the refresh rate to between 0.5 and 1 frame per second.
  • If you add more than 64 consoles to a group, only 64 will be rendered. Use another XBOX Manager instance on a different PC if you need to monitor more than 64 consoles at once.
  • The specs of your dev PC and your network bandwidth will affect how many consoles can effectively be viewed at once.
  • If you want to push new builds to all of the consoles, or execute scripts on all of the consoles, we recommend that you use the Command-line tools to remotely run scripts and commands on the consoles.
  • For group remote view, all consoles must be set to use Real-time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) and not Game Streaming mode.

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Small group scenarios (2 to 4 consoles)

If you are testing multiplayer on 2-4 consoles, you can use XBOX Manager to remotely control the games on each console from a single dev PC. Alternatively, you can use XBOX Manager in high FPS mode to remotely spectate game play while testers play directly on each console. Some features of XBOX Manager that you can use with 4 or less remote consoles:
  • You can use High FPS mode for up to 4 consoles.
  • You can map up to 4 physical controllers to your XBOX Manager instance, so you can map a controller to each remote console and remotely control each console.
Remarks:
  • XBOX Manager does not handle the share button on mapped physical controllers, so you can’t use the controllers to trigger game DVR recordings on the consoles. You can use GameBar or other video capture software on the dev PC to record output from XBOX Manager.
  • The streaming resolution displayed in XBOX Manager is limited to 1080p.

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Single console multiplayer

XBOX Manager is also useful for testing co-op and split screen multiplayer on a single remote console, since you can map up to 4 physical controllers to different players. You can map multiple virtual controllers, but only 1 virtual controller can be active at a time. This may be acceptable in turn based multiplayer games. Since you are connected to a single console, you can use Game Streaming mode as the streaming technology if latency is a concern or if your network is not stable.

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See also

For more information on managing multiple remote dev kits from a single instance of XBOX Manager, see the following topics:
Last modified on August 20, 2026

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