Windows 10 Has Cross Platform Play, Allows You To Stream Xbox One Games To Other Devices

At Microsoft’s Windows 10 media briefing, Phil Spencer stepped on stage to show us the future of Windows gaming, which they’re aiming to make more social and interactive than ever before.

This starts with the Xbox App – available on all Windows 10 PCs and tablets – which brings the Xbox One’s activity feed and social features, allowing you to view your friends’ video clips and even post your own videos from PC games using the Game DVR function at the click of a button.

You’ll even be able to instantly capture the last thirty seconds of gameplay as you can on Xbox One. Windows 10 works in tandem with Steam – they’re not looking to replace it – so you can just launch your games from there while recording your gameplay.

Since all of the social features work across different devices, you’ll also be able to play and chat with your friends on other platforms. This was shown with a demonstration of Fable Legends – now coming to PC too – which was played co-operatively between Xbox One and a Windows 10 device.

For your other Xbox One games – the console exclusives – you’ll be able to stream these to any Windows 10 devices, such as tablets and PCs – and from the demonstration it looked pretty smooth.

Direct X 12 will power games on Windows 10, and this is supported by game engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine 4. Despite being much more powerful and running a lot more smoothly – as a demonstration showed – this will actually save on battery life, an important factor for mobile devices.

Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for users of Windows 7 or 8 in its first year, and it’ll also be coming to Xbox One.

29 Comments

  1. Microsoft have really upped their game with Windows 10. Some cracking features coming with it and they only bode well for the Xbox Ones future. Also really excited to see how DirectX 12 turns out and if it will be integrated into Windows 10 on the Xbox One properly.

    • Careful. Windows 10 is free ONLY for the first year. Then on its a subscription like office365.

      It’s easy too get fooled into thinking windows 10 is free forever as long as you upgrade within a year.

      Therefore how much are you prepared to pay yearly for this feature?? (Given that it’s locked to windows 10 subscription model as it only works with windows 10).

      Not so desirable now huh? It’s a modified form of the much hated original Xbox one plans (that eventually got scrapped)

      • No you are mistaken, or flat out lying.

        The windows 10 license lasts for the lifetime of the device, just like previous windows.

      • Got a source for that? I have one that says the exact opposite.

        “Free for the first year” is very misleading. It can be read in two ways. If you upgrade within the first year, it’s free.

        Or..

        When you upgrade, it’s free of charge for the first year…

        Given this is Microsoft, which do you think it will be? Given that Windows 8 cost money to upgrade to, and they are offering this to BOTH windows 8 users and Windows 7 users, which do you think it will be?

        From the Q&A:

        “With Windows 10 we think of the operating system as ‘Windows as a service,'” said Terry Myerson, VP of operating systems at Redmond.”

        Also,

      • I just handed you a source, and you did not. Stop it.

      • Don’t feed the troll.

      • @dangerman, is that you MrBlighty?

      • Windows 10 will be completely free, as mentioned on the official Windows blog here:
        http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/01/21/the-next-generation-of-windows-windows-10/

        As someone that hates MS with a passion (wanted to make that clear before I go on), I have to admit they are doing this right. However, there are two things I wonder about.

        The first is this part “for the supported lifetime of the device – at no cost”. Does this mean that when the xbox one is replaced you will have to pay for future upgrades. I assume it will probably be like older consoles, and development just stop for it at that point.

        My second concern would be the possibility of a bad patch. MS are likely to make it a requirement of the console that it is always up to date (replacing their always-on policy?), so what happens if a patch fails? Admittedly, this is the same for all consoles, but, with a wider variety of hardware to support, the potential for error is naturally increased.

        I also wonder how easy it will be for businesses to block the gaming part of Windows 10 if they upgrade.

        But overall, definitely a positive step for them (and, yes, it hurts to say that :P).

      • The X1 won’t change in terms of OS. Windows 10 on Tablets and PCs will merely support the Xbox, so there’s nothing changing in the nature of updates or the supported lifetime on Xbox One. There’s no implantation of the Windows 10 PC OS on to X1.

        With the business side of things, I’m not sure what exactly they’re doing. I would’ve thought they’d do the same things as previous versions and create a Windows 10 Enterprise variant. I think most businesses are content with Windows 7 Enterprise at the moment though.

      • To be fair, Microsoft have not exactly come clean about whether they are still pursuing the subscription model *outside* of the free offer.
        The wording on the offer is clear enough, apart from “lifetime of the device”, it remains to be seen how long they deem that to be.
        Until Microsoft explicitly state otherwise, I’m still expecting *new* installs of Windows 10 *outside of the offer* to be subscription based.
        I’ll be happy to be proved wrong though :)

      • @plutoniumdragon I reckon Windows will become like OSX. When a new version comes out you will have to pay a small fee to upgrade to it. So for Windows 10.1 it could be something like £20 to upgrade and it comes with a bunch of exclusive features.

        That’s fine by me as you have no obligation to upgrade, but if you do you get some more features/optimisation etc.

  2. I’m hearing more about dx12 really being a game changer with devs now backing up the initial hype from ms. Could be huge for xbox.

    • A software API will never be a game changer… Not without hardware to back it.

    • I’m no expert, but here’s what I’ve gathered:

      It will be on PC, the consoles already support most of the same features from what I heard.

      The big change is that it’ll let games make proper use of multicore processors and run more efficient code. Similar to what’s possible on consoles, just not to quite the same level as hardware and drivers will still be different from pc to pc.

      It should make development on Xbox even easier when it comes to performance though, as those devs not willing to code to the metal can probably find it easier to get better performance.

  3. Being able to upgrade for free is pretty cool, especially as I’ve been avoiding Windows 8. I wonder if this means we’ll start seeing better gaming support on PC from MS.

    • Only upgrade in year 1. Costs money from then on…. Microsoft are offering you the ability to upgrade from a buy once use forever to a pay yearly is subscription model.

      Not so free….

      • Is someone paying you for this?

      • Of course not. But it’s easy to get tricked when it comes to Microsoft marketing. Headlines sound great, “Free upgrade to Windows 10 for everyone”, dig into the small print “only for the 1st year, then it’s subscription all the way, pay or lose it”.

        Me, i’m not that fussed. No way am I jumping on a subscription model, happy with Windows7, and most of the stuff in Windows 10 is undoing the Windows 8 mess.

      • Anyone that’s paid attention will know that Adobe moved to this model 3 years ago now, with their Adobe Creative Cloud product. You can’t buy “forever” licences now.. You rent it.

        Microsoft are doing this with their OS (and their Office suite)

      • “Not so free…”

        Actually yes, quite free. Windows 10 is not subscription-based, it’s been confirmed and reported already.

        However, on a side note, I’m sure pretty sure dangerman’s comments are subscription-based. Therefore if people would like to subscribe to dangerman’s comments, they must pay by writing an article on Microsoft or Xbox, they will then receive the comments. The best bit, all you need to do to keep receiving dangerman’s comments, is keep writing the MS/X1 articles!

      • He’s just farming for TSA points…

        I said hypocritical.

  4. Giving it away for free is clever. Putting a 1 year time limit is a masterstroke.

    So many people will be rushing to get the free update, and suddenly ms have a windows 7 level of marketshare, with unification across all platforms and all the other things win10 brings.

    • This. Along with effectively killing W7 they are throwing everything they can at it in an attempt to regain market dominance. This approach seems to work well enough for Apple :)

  5. given that the free upgrade option lasts a year, i’ll be waiting a while before deciding whether to upgrade or not.
    i’ll see what other people make of it first, and if it’s a resource hog.

    windows a resource hog? surely not. >_>

    • Windows 8 is far less of a resource hog than Windows 7, whatever else people may think of it or not like about it, the performance is great on decent hardware. So it bodes well for gaming if 10 is better still :)

  6. Sounds great. Loving how well it ties in with the X1. They get a lot of shit but MS are really doing it right at the moment.

    • Not seen anything that’s not playing catchup to what Sony/Google/Apple all already offer.

      One of the highlights being able to sync pictures between devices (????). WOW… Welcome to Android 1.6

      • All those companies copy off each other. Always have, always will. And android is possibly the worst OS I’ve ever used on anything. Everything is so buggy on it.

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