Xbox One isn’t backwards compatibility, but while the prospect of cloud-based Xbox 360 streaming is absolutely viable, Microsoft’s Albert Penello has explained why right now, it’s “problematic.”
Speaking with Polygon, Penello commented on leaked internal stream tests at Microsoft, which saw Halo 4 running on PC. He stressed that it was purely a test and not indicative of any incoming announcements.
He explained, “In the world of things I wish they had not shown at the Company Meeting because I knew I’d be asked about it later, put that at the top of my list. That is a good example, in certain circumstances [the cloud streaming] worked really awesome.”
As we’ve seen with Shuhei Yoshida’s concern over European broadband as a platform for Sony’s PS4 streaming tech Gaikai, Penello raised similar doubts. “It’s really cool and really problematic, all at the same time, insofar as it’s really super cool if you happen to have the world’s most awesome internet connection. It works way better than you’d expect it to,” Penello continued.
“So managing quality of service, the tolerance people will have for it being crappy. Can you imagine, in this day and age, with the bad information around, and we can’t control the quality of that experience and make sure it’s good, or have to tell people they can’t do it?”
It’d be a nightmare that’s for sure, so it makes sense to hold off for now. However, Penello added of the Halo 4 test, “It was a grand experiment, I know we did a lot of work behind it, and we said this is one of the things where the network just has to get better before we can do it. When that happens, you’re going to have a really interesting conversation around that, can I actually run Xbox One games that way as well.”