Microsoft reportedly testing its own cloud streaming

Halo on your PC?

From the sound of it, there will soon be no escape streaming games. Sony will use Gaikai to stream PlayStation 3 games to PS4, there’s also the PS Vita TV, and similar functionality is planned for Steam users who purchase or build a SteamOS-powered machine. According to The Verge, Microsoft is putting together a cloud gaming service of its own.

The company reportedly showed off an internal prototype which had Halo 4 streamed to a Windows Phone and a PC from the cloud. Even if this doesn’t become a direct response to Sony’s backward compatibility solution, that sounds like something I’d be into — assuming it works well enough. Apparently, the latency on a test with the Lumia 520 was 45ms.

I’m skeptical of cloud streaming in its current state, but conceptually I am on board. With enough of these big players trying to one-up each other, perhaps the technology will get to where it needs to be to provide a good user experience before too long.

Microsoft demonstrates Halo 4 streaming from the cloud to Windows and Windows Phones [The Verge]