As the tech company gears up for a release of Windows 10, a leak detailing Microsoft’s ‘Arcadia’ project points to features for both app and game streaming.
In the past few months, Microsoft has been forced to come to terms with some uncomfortable truths. Namely that Windows 8 has been a flop and that that their Windows Phones massively struggle to go up against the likes of iOS and Android because they don’t offer enough content as those rivals.
So how does Microsoft plan on fixing these pressing issues? Several job listings point to a service that’s being code-named ‘Arcadia’, with the job descriptions explaining that it will offer app and game streaming.
Arcadia, it’s said, will replace the Rio streaming technology that Microsoft demoed at a September 2013 conference. It will rely on the company’s Azure cloud to stream content.
The job listing reads as follows:
“The new Operating Systems Group (OSG) Streaming team is leveraging the cloud to bring premium and unique experiences to Microsoft’s core platforms. These experiences take advantage of a new geo-distributed massively scaling service to redefine what is possible on today’s devices.
“The client team is building the user facing application(s), bridging the service and devices together seamlessly. Our team is a small but growing and dedicated to solving one of Microsoft’s biggest business challenges in a creative fashion.”
This all sounds incredibly promising and there are clear benefits to being able to stream content to our devices. For example Xbox One consoles may be able to stream PC games (and vice versa) and it’s also being suggested that Windows Phone users may be able to stream Android through the in-development service, fixing the aforementioned mobile app shortage.
However, although Windows 10 will fix such problems as the lack of a Start menu (along with the Metro tiled layout), it could make one particular problem worse – selling extra services.
On Windows 8, rather than Microsoft Word and other Office products coming as standard, you have to pay extra for them. As Microsoft looks to monetise their next operating system (further than the initial purchase) there’s a good chance that Arcadia streaming will come at a heavy cost for those on Microsoft desktops.
Of course it’s still early days for Arcadia (it may not even be called that by the time it officially launches) and we most likely won’t see it at the Windows 10 preview event later this month, but clearly, there are concerns to be cleared up before it makes it to retail.
Source: ZDNet
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