Streaming games over the internet has yet to massively take off, especially here in Australia where such a service would unusable without local servers. If reports are to believed, that hasn’t stopped Microsoft from plugging away at its own browser-based technology, which would allow users to play Xbox games on their PC (or other browser-equipped device). Say what?
Based on information provided by a source, Neowin’s Brad Sams writes that Microsoft has Xbox 360 and One titles running “right around 60fps” and that the service could debut in the “not-to-distant future”, given its level of progress.
It’s also not locked into Internet Explorer, with the tech apparently operating fine through Chrome.
Microsoft clearly has the resources to make this happen — just look at its Azure cloud business — but I’m not sure if PC gamers will accept streamed console games over native titles and proper ports.
Microsoft is testing playing Xbox games in your browser [Neowin]
Comments
10 responses to “Xbox Games Streamed To Browsers Being Tested By Microsoft: Report”
Sounds cool, but I bet they’ll cripple it by making it exclusive to Internet Explorer.
They should just put a comment option next to the article/title on the main page so people can read the title of an article and post a comment without having the inconvenience of opening the article.
Oh no, and I always promised that I’d never be one of those people who skim the article then go straight to the comments.
Just pray it isn’t locked to something even worse like Java or Silverlight…
Because streaming works on magicdust?
No, because Mozilla, Google and a multitude of others have already started making streaming clients for extremely similar use cases (Remote Desktop Gaming) that run entirely using HTML5. If you’re gonna make something for the web, make it using web standards or just release a native application and stop fooling yourselves.
Nothing wrong with Java, but it’s not the right choice for a streaming client.
I honestly don’t know why companies are throwing money and resources at this. Even great internet connections are a little glitchy, and the bandwidth required to game will eat into anyone’s allowance really quickly. Also, from a cost to provide point of view, it would cost the supplier more than just making it available to download, I don’t see the upside for either party.
It just doesn’t seem worth it on any level. I guess they learn all sorts of useful things along the way by attempting this, but even with netflix, you get stutters occasionally, and that is with a movie where you can have big buffers setup.
It seems kinds of silly that Microsoft would want to release this technology to gamers. If Xbox games can be played over the browser, then why would people want to buy an Xbox console in the first place?