How Star Wars became the catalyst for upgrading to Windows 10
Source: Microsoft / xbox.com
One good turn deserves another. Or in the case of recent developments in my household, one tech upgrade begets another.
A while ago, I fell in love with the new version of Star Wars: Battlefront. Even before I’d played the game, the prospect of crushing “rebel scum” had me salivating. By the time I’d watched the various demos and trailers from E3, it had become a matter of when I’d upgrade to the XBox One, rather than if.
So it was, that Battlefront became a major driver behind me upgrading to the XBox One.
What’s perhaps a little unexpected though is how Battlefront ended up setting in motion my upgrade to Windows 10.
Earlier this year I purchased a new desktop computer from Dell. It was released in that window (no pun intended 🙂 where manufacturers were installing Windows 8.2, but including a free upgrade to Windows.
For the last few months my PC has been not-so-patiently reminding me that it’s time to upgrade to Windows 10. But I’ve never really had any reason to make the switch. Heck, I only ‘upgraded’ to Windows 8.2 because that’s what came with my new computer. Windows 7 was meeting all my needs just fine.
But if you’ve bought an XBox One, there’s a great reason to give in to the nagging and move to Windows 10. The ability to stream games from your XBox One to your PC.
What?
Yes, play XBox One games on your PC. And not just your PC, but your Windows 10 tablets as well. This seems to be Microsoft’s nice little sweetener for those folks who have given Microsoft powered devices prominence in their homes. As a strategy for locking people in the the Microsoft ecosystem, this is a smart move.
So how well does it work?
Setup was pretty straight forward. The option for game streaming was already enabled on my XBox One. On my PC, I simply fired up the XBox app and logged in with my XBox Live account. A couple of clicks later and my XBox was mirrored on my desktop monitor.
Determined to put the streaming to the test, I dived into a game of Battlefront. While the quality of the experience isn’t the same is playing on the big screen in the lounge room, my 26” Dell delivered a pretty solid performance. If you have to share your TV, it’s an option that’s well worth exploring.
Perhaps the only drawback I’ve found so far is that you need to be logged in to the XBox One before you can connect and stream to your PC. In practise that means you’ll need to start the XBox streaming before you hand your TV over to someone else.
But that’s a small price to pay for the convenience of being able to play your XBox One games on an alternate screen.
So if you’re the owner of an XBox One and you’ve been wondering if you should move up to Windows 10 – this is the upgrade you’ve been looking for.