A new system update has been released for the Xbox One as per Major Nelson which will prepare console owners for two new big features.

The first is game streaming to Windows 10 which will be launching on July 29th and the second involves backwards compatibility for Xbox 360 games on the console. As of now, there aren’t any user-facing features for this month but these updates will help prepare for the new Xbox One interface debuting later this year.

Microsoft took the world by surprise by announcing backwards compatibility for Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One at this year’s E3. While the feature will debut later this year, Preview Program members are currently able to test it out. Backwards compatibility will launch with strong game support according to Microsoft.

As for Windows 10, it will herald the debut of DirectX 12 to the world. How long it will take for the API’s effect to be felt in the gaming world remains to be seen so stay tuned for more information.

Game streaming from the Xbox One console to Windows 10 PCs have finally been made available for Preview Program members on the former and Inside Beta users of the latter. A new FAQ for the same was revealed by program manager Emily Hanson on the preview forums and provided plenty of information on how the streaming would work.

It has been noted that all games will be available for streaming except those which require special hardware like Kinect or accessories not supported by PC. Since the entire console is mirrored onto your PC, you’ll be able to navigate your Home screen and use apps.

However, apps with content that’s playback protected or under DRM won’t stream to your PC. Hanson also said that publishers can choose to opt-out of streaming if they wish but as of the start of the preview, “there are no games/publishers who have explicitly opted out.”

Check out the entire FAQ here (since you need to be a preview program member to access the forums) for more information and stay tuned for more news on the Xbox One in the wake of Microsoft’s E3 conference as the week rolls on.

One of the oldest innovators of online game streaming OnLive will be shutting down later this month and selling its assets to Sony, which already owns Gaikai (which later formed the foundation for PlayStation Now.

The company stated that, “Following the termination of the company’s services and related products, OnLive will engage in an orderly wind-down of the company and cease operations.” OnLive will remain active till April 30th and those who happened to subscribe after March 28th will given refunds. Head to the official FAQ here for more details.

Sony is turning into quite the game-streaming powerhouse, given that Gaikai was OnLive’s major competition. The assets and IP acquired by Sony include “substantial innovations in cloud gaming”. Till will tell how this goes into improving PlayStation Now.

What are your thoughts on the closure of OnLive? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and stay tuned for further updates on what Sony does with the assets acquired.

Popular streaming service Twitch announced that it has reached 100 million unique viewers each month, continuing its astronomical growth since its launch in mid-2011.

Other interesting figures from the announcement include those from 2014, where the service reached 1 million concurrent viewers, 1.5 million unique broadcasters in each month and 11 million videos broadcasted per month. Each month has 16 billion minutes worth of gameplay videos watched and 10,000 total partnered channels. If that’s not a testament to the popularity and outreach of video game streaming, nothing is.

Twitch was purchased last year by Amazon for a rather hefty $970 million and this was after rumours of Google looking to acquire it. Thus far, there have been several changes including a prohibition of copyrighted music and the launch of a copyright-free music library which streamers could access for use in their videos.

What are your thoughts on the success of Twitch thus far? Let us know in the comments.

Reactions to this news have been mixed at best. While many agree that it’s better than renting a game for a handful of hours or days while paying arguably close to the original retail price, some still believe the subscription price to be much higher than they were hoping for. $20 per month over the course of a year comes to $240 (or almost $180 per year if you go for the 3 month plan). At that point, when do you stop streaming games and just decide it would be better to buy a used console and games for the same price?

"We’d also point out that PSN going down is also a significant problem but Sony has thankfully reimbursed consumers with free PS Plus time and offers following the last major server outage."

The other concerns surrounding PS Now are hard to ignore. Just because you have more than 100 games to choose from doesn’t mean you’ll be playing them all. Even if you do have time to fit in half as many games into your monthly schedule, there’s also the issue of bandwidth. PS Now faced several issues when it was in the beta stage and while there shouldn’t be streaming issues as such when it finally gets rolling on PS4, that’s still a ton of bandwidth that consumers will need to part with.

We’d also point out that PSN going down is also a significant problem but Sony has thankfully reimbursed consumers with free PS Plus time and offers following the last major server outage. That being said, you can still count on people having issues with the same if PSN decides it’s not going to cooperate somewhere in the middle.

In terms of bandwidth and connectivity, you can’t even say it’s the same case with Steam, because you can actually download the games and play them offline (depending on their requirements). PS Now will arguably be the first major commercial game streaming service for consoles. Sony is pretty much in uncharted waters but it does have a plan of sorts.

"The mark of a successful subscription-based digital experience isn’t always its price, though that plays a significant part. It’s about providing a valuable service, one that a consumer doesn’t think twice about renewing each month."

Make no mistake – this is Sony’s solution for backwards compatibility of its old PS3 games. Will it still offer the PS3 for consumers who don’t want to take the digital option? Perhaps the console will be phased out over the coming years depending on the success of PS Now. Regardless, it does present a viable option for Sony to save money on manufacturing PS3 consoles while still garnering significant revenue from interested players.

The mark of a successful subscription-based digital experience isn’t always its price, though that plays a significant part. It’s about providing a valuable service, one that a consumer doesn’t think twice about renewing each month. Netflix is the classic example. You may not watch movies and TV shows every day but you can’t imagine life without it. How else will you binge watch House of Cards Season 3? You’re not going to queue it up anywhere else and waste your time.

Likewise, why would you subscribe to the WWE Network, World Wrestling Entertainment’s 24/7 wrestling network, if you don’t feel like you need it? Missing content, lacklustre pay per view events, very few exclusive shows – this is an example of only hardcore fans really enjoying a digital service. It’s good for nostalgia purposes, for sure. But will that be enough for Sony’s PlayStation Now?

"Maybe PS Now will find a base appeal for someone who doesn’t want to shell out money each month for new PS3 games. Maybe someone really doesn’t want to spend more than $20 per month on a new PS3 game."

The company has already proven that even if the majority of its user base isn’t hardcore that it can sell tens of millions of PS4 consoles. PlayStation Plus subscriptions have also crossed the 10 million mark and that’s arguably because most people just want multiplayer.

Maybe PS Now will find a base appeal for someone who doesn’t want to shell out money each month for new PS3 games. Maybe someone really doesn’t want to spend more than $20 per month on a new PS3 game. Heck, maybe they want to try out a new game before they decide whether they like it. If you play Batman: Arkham City, The Last of Us, only having to spend $20 to experience them all, haven’t you gotten your money’s worth?

It’s all very subjective and there are plenty of unavoidable issues that Sony needs to work out before PS Now could be called an out-and-out success. There’s plenty of value to be had here depending on one’s requirements. It’s just up to Sony about how well it can market it as such.

While the PlayStation Vita TV has been a decent addition to the handheld, allowing one to play their Vita games on a TV via HDMI, it’s newest feature may be its greatest. You can now stream PS4 games directly to your TV using Vita TV with a new firmware patch.

The PlayStation Vita already supported PS4 Remote Play but this now means you connect the Vita TV to any screen in the house, wirelessly connect it to your console and play PS4 games on said TV. The only issue thus far seems to be that the patch is only available in Japan.

The Vita TV has seen some decent success in its initial run, though sales have reduced heavily in the past few months. But like the Vita, which receive a boost thanks to the launch of the PS4, maybe the Vita TV will also see improved sales. Currently, there don’t seem to be any plans for Vita TV to arrive in the West, although Sony is interested in the same if demand is high enough.

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Gaikai had already put out concept images for their upcoming game-streaming service PlayStation Now but now the site has updated to reveal potential prices for some of the games on offer. You can check it out above, and it lists games like Far Cry 3, Uncharted 3 and The Last of Us.

Far Cry 3 would cost $5.99 and Uncharted 3 would retail for $4.99 while The Last of Us will cost $49.99. This shouldn’t be taken as official confirmation of prices – it’s more than likely that these are placeholder prices.

PlayStation Now is currently in the beta stage and will release this Summer. It will aim to offer Cloud-based game-streaming to the PlayStation 4. Another game that will be heading to the service is Beyond: Two Souls.

While there’s been plenty of criticism of PlayStation Now and its overall viability by Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter, there’s still plenty of potential with the service. What are your thoughts? Let us know below.

Arrington responded, “It is an interesting way to think about how to keep the console on par with PC advances. Once consoles launch PCs quickly outpace them in graphics and processing capabilities. If that can be compensated for in the cloud that take some of the advantage away from the PC. It is a large investment, and the core PC gaming market is not very large in comparison to the console market. So, pushing that side of cloud gaming probably isn’t going to be a high priority in the beginning. It will become much more important as the consoles age.”

She also stated that from a technical standpoint, specifications don’t matter when it comes to streaming so the Xbox One will be as capable of streaming games as the PS4. “I don’t think the console specs come into play much when the processing is done in the cloud. If either were to implement a hybrid approach with some processing done locally it might make a difference, but even then the whole point is offloading processing so it doesn’t make all that much difference.”

Microsoft has talked about other advantages that the Cloud can bring, including improved AI, dedicated servers for multiplayer and even facilitating fixes/changes on the fly. Will it tip the scales in the Xbox One’s favour? We’ll find out in the coming months.

This was reported in a post-Tokyo Game Show round-table. Yoshida stated there will be a selection of titles for streaming made available by next year, and that more games will be added over time. As of now, he wants gamers to have a decent selection once the service is launched. It was also confirmed that you’ll be able to play the games via PS Vita and PS Vita TV.

Buying a Vita TV just to remotely play your PS3 games which you’re streaming to your Vita first on your TV? Apparently so. Unfortunately, Yoshida still had no news on a European launch. So stay tuned for more details.

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When asked if they would follow Gaikai’s lead in game streaming, Penello stated “Yeah, absolutely. That’s one of the things that makes [the cloud] at the same time both totally interesting and hard to describe to people. Because what the cloud can do is sort of hard to pin. When you say to the customer, we want the box to be connected, we want developers to know that the cloud is there. We’re really not trying to make up some phony thing.

“But there are so many things that the servers can do. Using our Azure cloud servers, sometimes it’s things like voice processing. It could be more complicated things like rendering full games like a Gaikai and delivering it to the box. We just have to figure out how, over time, how much does that cost to deliver, how good is the experience.”

Will it make backwards compatibility a possibility after all? We’ll find out as the Xbox One nears its November 22nd global launch.