With Windows 10 You Can Stream Any Xbox One Game To Your PC Or Tablet

Sony has dabbled in the streaming of PlayStation games to devices within its own ecosystem like Vita and Xperia phones. Valve's in-home streaming for Steam delivers the capability of playing a large majority of your PC games library to other "client" computers (even Macs) or devices like Nvidia's Shield. Now, Microsoft is jumping directly into the ring, giving Xbox One users the ability to stream any Xbox One game to an in-network tablet or PC running Windows 10.

During a live demo at Microsoft's Windows 10 press event today, Xbox head Phil Spencer demonstrated the new Xbox app for Windows 10 which, among other welcome features, introduces the new streaming ability. Spencer paired an Xbox One controller with a Windows 10 PC and launched Forza Horizon 2 directly from the PC. After only a few seconds, the game was streaming on the PC with no detectable latency, although to be fair that's not a feature we can judge properly from a controlled environment like this.

Spencer did emphasize that this feature will work with any Xbox One game. What we don't know yet is what type of network environment will be needed, but I suspect a 5GHz connection will be a a minimum requirement, with both devices running from ethernet as the ideal situation. From what we know about Steam's in-home streaming, this functionality should work brilliantly with even the lowliest PC or tablet, provided it has a dual-core or better CPU.

Technical performance aside, this a wonderfully welcome feature and the implications are huge. Who hasn't wanted to play Destiny, Halo, or Forza in bed from their Surface? For that matter, how many families are constantly fighting over the living room TV? This will certainly alleviate the monopolization of the TV by your Xbox One -- or vice versa.

"This is an amazing unlock for our Xbox One customers," said Xbox head Phil Spencer during a Windows 10 press event in Seattle. "This is just the beginning of our discussion about gaming on Windows 10."

The presentation was brief, leaving ample room for future announcements. For now, it looks like the Xbox One is finally getting some of the exciting features we were vaguely promised before it hit shelves.

I wonder if this Xbox One to Windows 10 streaming feature will require an Xbox Live subscription?

Here's a more important question: Could this mean playing Halo 5: Guardians or the next Gears of War with a keyboard and mouse? I doubt it (not until Xbox One officially supports it as a control scheme), but I'll remain hopeful on that front. I'll keep you posted as soon as I know more.