Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system debuts today, enabling Xbox One game streaming to PCs. While that’s a neat feature for Xbox One owners, Microsoft is working on streaming PC games to Xbox One consoles too. In an interview with The Verge, Microsoft’s head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, reveals the company is working on the feature. “We understand if you’re going to go PC to Xbox, we need to get keyboard and mouse working completely so you could play those games,” explains Spencer. “In terms of where we want to go with our platform, those are absolutely in scope of things that we want to do.”
Microsoft is working on streaming PC games to Xbox One
is a senior correspondent and author of Notepad, who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years.
"Challenge is good."
The real challenge of getting PC to Xbox game streaming working is encoding games and having the right amount of bandwidth to stream them to the Xbox One. Streaming from Xbox One to Windows 10 PCs is a lot more predictable “because we know exactly what you have,” says Spencer. “It’s actually a little more challenging doing the encoding on the PC side to the Xbox, but challenge is good.” There’s no timeline on when this might arrive, but it’s clearly a challenge Microsoft is willing to tackle.
It’s early days for Xbox and Windows integration, but if the Xbox app is anything to go by then the future of gaming on Windows 10 is going to be interesting. “[Gamers] want to play games on the device that they want to play on. They want to play with their friends and they progress whenever they sit down,” explains Spencer. “Because of that, the roadmap and our focus on what’s going on, Windows is incredibly strong.”
Verge Video: Streaming Xbox One to Windows 10
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