You Might (One Day) Be Able To Stream PC Games To An Xbox One


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You Might (One Day) Be Able To Stream PC Games To An Xbox One

You Might (One Day) Be Able To Stream PC Games To An Xbox OneMicrosoft’s Xbox boss Phil Spencer has told The Verge that the company is working on a way for users to be able to stream their PC games to  an Xbox  One console.

 

We knew that Windows 10 (which is out today) would let you do the opposite (Xbox One-to-PC), but PC-to-Xbox One streaming is new.

 

“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,” says Spencer. “In terms of where we want to go with our platform, those are absolutely in scope of things that we want to do.”

 

There are big technical hurdles to overcome before this actually works, of course, and all Spencer is talking about are plans, not something more concrete. So this might never happen!

 

But if it does, it sure will be neat. Provided you’ve got a comfy way to use a keyboard and mouse on the couch, at least.

 

If you don’t want to wait, though, remember: Valve is launching its own approach to big-TV streaming in November for $50.

 

Source: Kotaku

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I was reading up on this a little bit.

If this can be pulled off, and good performance can be maintained, Microsoft will be changing the gaming landscape drastically.

Would this kill Steambox before the even had/have any chance? 

I can see people buying Xbox Ones but NO Xbox One games, and just using it as a stream/entertainment box 

Will this have any effect on competing consoles (PS, Nintendo) from a 3rd party perspective?  

 

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This will happen next year I'm sure, I'm thinking Feb-April timeframe.  They already said they're going to add mouse support to the XB1, and that plays into this as well, so I expect it'll happen.  For MS the idea here is clear, be it a XB1 game being played on the console and streamed to the PC or a XBL enabled game being played on Windows 10, bought through the Windows Store and streamed to the XB1, it's win win for MS.

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I was reading up on this a little bit.

If this can be pulled off, and good performance can be maintained, Microsoft will be changing the gaming landscape drastically.

Would this kill Steambox before the even had/have any chance? 

I can see people buying Xbox Ones but NO Xbox One games, and just using it as a stream/entertainment box 

Will this have any effect on competing consoles (PS, Nintendo) from a 3rd party perspective?  

 

I don't know why it couldn't be pull off with good performance.  A gaming PC has much more capable hardware than the Xbox One so if the Xbox One can stream to a Win10 box then I don't see why a Win10 box that meets some basic hardware specs wouldn't be able to stream to an Xbox One.  If the PC has hardware to encode H.264 video (most modern GPUs do) then the Xbox One has hardware to receive and decode it (it already does this for Blu-Ray movies, Netflix videos, etc.)  They'll probably cap the resolution/framerate of the stream due to bandwidth issues but it may very well work at 1080p@60fps since that isn't crazy high for modern PCs and is at least as good as native Xbox One games.  Once you have the PC screen (which btw doesn't even need to be a game, if you want to stream your desktop to run word in the living room off your Xbox One you should be able to do that too) streamed as video across the network to the Xbox One all that remains is sending the inputs (mouse/keyboard/gamepad) back.  It sounds like the issue right now is just Xbox One lacks complete mouse/keyboard support.

"kill Steambox"??? Steambox isn't exactly a roaring success as it is.  I don't think this would make it go away because some of the people using it are doing so just to avoid MS products (steam on linux) and Valve would likely keep it around because it's their hedge in the long term in the event that versions of windows where you can only buy from the MS Store (such as less than 8" screen devices for Win10) become the dominant platform.  That may never happen but if it does they want to have an option to take their users elsewhere if the MS Store restricts apps that sell other apps (which is commonly done now) which would effective ban Steam from Windows.  Unlikely as it may be they just don't want to get caught with their pants down so they'll just drag Steambox along on life support as an insurance policy.  Unless MS does block Steam don't expect Valve to put a TON of effort into Steambox, but don't expect it to go away either.

Buying and Xbox One ONLY to receive streams from a PC is extremely expensive.  If Win10 supports streaming games like that MS should launch a streaming device with minimal hardware to receive the PC stream for much cheaper than $300, like in the $99 range.  It doesn't take much hardware to decode a stream and send input (which is why Sony's PlayStation Now works on TVs for example).  Also Win10 to a dedicated streaming device could use H.265 which is becoming common on phone hardware but the Xbox One (and PS4) lack hardware decode for.  This would result in lower bandwidth streams for the same resolution or higher resolution/framerate streams at the same bandwidth.

I don't think it will make a big difference for competing consoles.  The big gain here is for PC gamers with gaming rigs that play games better than the Xbox One or PS4.  One interesting thing though is some of the "Sony console exclusive" games like Street Fighter V are also coming to PC.  So with this you could stream Street Fighter V from your PC to your Xbox One and get around the "exclusive" in a way.

 

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People are expecting to play their PC (old dics, Steam, Orgin, ...)  games but in the end I think it will be Xbox Store games that didn't get the universal treatment or are just better with a mouse and keyboard.

Big news would be Steam releasing an app on Xbox and PS4 that let people stream from PC to their consoles. Big Picture mode for Consoles.

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People are expecting to play their PC (old dics, Steam, Orgin, ...)  games but in the end I think it will be Xbox Store games that didn't get the universal treatment or are just better with a mouse and keyboard.

Big news would be Steam releasing an app on Xbox and PS4 that let people stream from PC to their consoles. Big Picture mode for Consoles.

They do seem to have pseudo support for lots games on Windows 10 for the Xbox app, so whilst there is some evidence it may happen as we'd like, I suspect you'll be right. It would be a shareholder type decision (make money, make more money) rather than one with us being rewarded for many years of spurning.

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Whilst this is cool, what would be the practical use for this? what's the difference in using another stream service like Intel Widi  ?

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/visual-technology/wireless-display-video.html

The practical use would be for Windows 10 gamers who have nice gaming rigs that have superior hardware specs to current gen consoles but have their rigs set up in a bedroom or office to stream their games to the living room TV with the Xbox One.  As a PC gamer first myself and with a PC that's more powerful than either console I'm FAR more interested in this then I am streaming an Xbox One game on, running on it's comparatively weak hardware, to my much more capable Windows 10 PC.  There are a lot of PC games that don't even have console versions (just as there are console games without PC versions) so this would enable you to play those games in your living room on the Xbox One.

Intel Widi is a specific implementation, this is a capability for a piece of hardware.  In fact maybe MS will choose to use Intel Widi as their streaming technology to enable this capability, maybe they'll use something else.  If they DO choose the particular implementation of Intel Widi then this headline could very well be "Microsoft adds Intel Widi support to Xbox One".  It's the super early days here so people aren't really talking about how exactly they are going to make it work, what specific implementation (Widi or other) they would use, etc.  Right now the talk to just if Xbox One will support streaming from PCs at all.

 

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Why not just make the Xbox One double as a Steam box? They're going to put Windows 10 on it, and hate on consoles all you want, the XB1's specs are fine for 2015 and 2016. My PC surpasses it, and maybe yours does too, but a PC built to XB1 spec is not going to be bad for gaming for a while. The point would not be to play new games, anyway. And perhaps the XB1 could warn you, this game will not work on this particular machine. So now instead of having X games, however many games the XB1 has out right now, it now has a thousand or so more (or more). Like, oh hey, you can now play the original Deus Ex on your XB1 (something even the OG Xbox couldn't do... or the PS2 for that matter, not without some real heavy modifications). Or Counter-Strike. Or Half-Life 2. Or the multitude of games that came out on both 360+PC or PS3+PC. Like Skyrim, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 — IMO, the best of the previous generation. *ahem* That's Skyrim with MODS. Yeah, that would sell a few XB1 units, I would think.

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They're not going to let it work with Steam, MS doesn't care as much but they'd rather not do it and Valve would rather you buy into their steam box and not buy a XB1 so they're not going to do it from their side.

 

In the end I don't mind if it's limited to Xbox Live enabled games, do the steam streaming from PC to TV support games from Origin or uPlay and so on? I think even that only works with Steam supported games, so MS's way of doing it would be no different in that regard.

 

Another thing, if the Windows Store can add more and more AAA XBL supported games to it with the ability to cross-buy, cross-play then I'd buy them, specially if I have the ability to not only stream going both ways between my PC and my XB1 but even better, pick up the same game from one where I left it on the other through the cloud save and sync features.

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