Microsoft Admits Its Game Streaming Service Is "Cool But Problematic"

Microsoft Admits Its Game Streaming Service Is "Cool But Problematic"

Six months ago Don Mattrick, then the head of Microsoft's interactive entertainment division, announced that Xbox One won't support Xbox 360 games in any way.

Mattrick believed that "if you’re backwards compatible, you’re really backwards" and that design for the new console shouldn't be shackled up by backward compatibility constraints. Nonetheless, the company is not blind to its consumers' demands and hence it experimented with game streaming as a way to offer Xbox 360 on Xbox One, PC and Windows Phones.

According to Microsoft executive Albert Penello, the company's experimentation with game streaming has been " 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."

Clearly, those problems will have to be addressed before Microsoft can launch its game streaming service. On the other side, Sony has already announced that PlayStation 3 games streaming will be enabled for PS4 players sometime in 2014. Penello isn’t sure how they plan to do so, but he is "really interested" to see if they managed to overcome the connection problems baffling Microsoft.