RUMOURS: XBOX ON PC

XBOX GAMES TO SOON BE PLAYABLE via Pc Browser Microsoft has stepped away from PC gaming over the past few years after gamer backlash over its disastrous Games for Windows service. But while the company has sat back and watched as the likes of Steam took over the PC gaming market, it could soon be making a comeback through a game steaming service it is rumoured to be working on.

According to Neowin, Microsoft is developing a streaming platform that will allow full Xbox One and Xbox 360 games to be streamed to the PC browser, where they can be playable at 60 fps. While Xbox One games can be streamed, the Xbox 360 will supposedly go a step further by streaming the entire dashboard to the PC browser, making it a fully-functional virtual console.

While this sounds like a great service, Microsoft has certain hurdles to cross, aside from the technicalities. Chief among them is working with game publishers, since a service like this could eat into their PC game revenues.

OUr TAKE:  Microsoft has been investing heavily in cloud-based technologies so a service that uses its Azure platform to stream Xbox games to other platforms seems perfectly plausible. That said, Microsoft will only do something like this if there’s lots of money to be made, and with them also having to appease publishers, we wouldn’t be surprised if the company charges a hefty fee (either per game, or per hour) for this streaming service over and above the Xbox Live subscription, similar to what Sony is planning with PlayStation Now.

Then, of course, there’s the issue of streaming itself. High-quality triple-A games will require a lot of bandwidth to stream and making that gameplay lag-free will also require low-latency connections, something that will be a problem in India. So even if Xbox games streaming to PC does become a reality, it’s something that may not be relevant to India for a long time.