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How The Marriage Of Windows 10 And Xbox One Will Help Microsoft

Paul Tassi
This article is more than 5 years old.

Windows 10 is out today, though by “out” I mean you will likely be sitting around waiting for your computer to update until some sentient Microsoft AI deems you worthy enough to upgrade. When that does finally happen, however, you’ll find a whole host of new features to play with, and specifically, Windows 10 will have a newfound relationship with your Xbox One.

There are two major ways that Windows 10 will tie into Xbox at launch, one of which seems more useful than the other. This new connection to the console may play out to be a pretty significant tool in Microsoft’s arsenal as both the OS and the Xbox One continue to evolve.

The first and most prominent connection is the Xbox One app, which allows you to see your entire Xbox One news feed and friends list on your PC at any given time. There are cool features like a game DVR which lets you chop up footage from your PC or Xbox Games and post it online, but overall I’m a tad skeptical at how useful accessing your Xbox feed on your PC will be in most circumstances.

Much more interesting is the new ability to stream Xbox One games straight from your console to any Windows 10 device, from your PC to your laptop to your Surface, if you deem it necessary. As I’ve said many times in the lead-up to this launch, for anyone that has a roommate, spouse or a gaggle of children running around, the ability to flip over from your TV to practically any other screen in your house is a useful enough feature to potentially be a gamechanger. Microsoft has also announced they’re working on vice-versa streaming, aka, PC games beamed to your Xbox One. I’m not sure this is quite as practical, but it’s cool all the same.

So right at launch, I’m not sure if Windows 10 will be some massive force propelling the Xbox One ahead of the PS4 in terms of usefulness, but the potential is there where continued integration with the OS could prove very important indeed as more and more features are added.

While Microsoft is currently pretending that Kinect doesn’t exist, millions of Xbox One player still have it connected to their consoles, or at the very least, in a drawer somewhere. Eventually, Microsoft would be wise to fashion a version of its Siri-killing AI Cortana for Xbox One users, particularly because she was gleaned from the Halo universe in the first place. While many have written off the Kinect almost entirely, the appeal of issuing voice commands to Cortana, and even having conversations with her in some instances, is a neat potential feature that could be carried over from Windows 10.

And when Microsoft figures out how to stream PC games to Xbox One and integrates mouse and keyboard support, the next logical step is simply beaming your entire PC with full Windows 10 functionality straight to your TV. While it’s always been possible to use a PC from your couch in some way or another, Windows 10-to-Xbox streaming could make that process easier than ever, and potentially encourage mass adoption of the practice at long last.

These all may seem like minor points, but over time they could snowball in a way that could pose a threat to Sony , which seems to be pretty content sitting on their PS4 sales lead. With such a dominant lead in the console race, they’re comfortable adding less features, and even heading into holiday windows without major exclusive games. Over time, Microsoft could build up Xbox One and Windows 10 integration to the point where it all adds up to a pretty useful feature set that could distinguish the two consoles, which have been more or less identical for quite a while.

Sony has offered the ability to stream PS4 games to its handheld Vita for ages, but that requires buying a Vita, which isn’t exactly the strongest product outside of this feature. And if they do want to figure out some sort of native PC streaming, I doubt Microsoft is going to be bending over backward to help them with that. In contrast, in this new era Microsoft views the Xbox One as an appendage that needs care and integration with all their other products and systems, and that kind of royal treatment will help the system immensely.

To date, gamers have shown they don’t really care all that much about consoles as “living room PCs” which could work in Sony’s favor, as they keep the focus on gaming, and the PS4 has none of the baggage the Xbox One carried around for months after launch. Sony did right by gamers, and gamers rewarded them in turn by buying the PS4 en masse. But how long Sony can ride that wave of goodwill is unknown if the Xbox One keeps racking up useful functionality. I own both consoles, but for example if I’m now given the choice between buying a third party game like Fallout 4 on one system or the other, I am probably now going to choose the Xbox One version every time because my living situation could really benefit from Xbox One-to-PC streaming.

It remains to be seen if these new features are just going to be a niche, or if over time they can amass a collection of users that couldn’t live without these new abilities. Regardless, marrying Windows 10 to Xbox One doesn’t seem like an unhappy union in the least, and the potential is there for some very cool interactions all throughout this console generation.



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