Microsoft's New Xbox One App Lets You Stream PC Games, Sort Of
The Xbox One can already do a lot of things. It can play games. It can play 4K Blu-Ray movies. It can even act as your Spotify hub or your YouTube TV box. And now, finally, your Xbox One can stream games from your PC, giving you a way to experience your PC titles on a much larger screen.
The question is, can Microsoft's Wireless Display app handle this task capably? The answer might depend on what type of game you're trying to play and the local network connection you have.
In all honestly, the Wireless Display app — which just hit the Microsoft Store on Xbox One — is probably not meant for those with gaming in mind. It doesn't support keyboard and mouse inputs, and the controller inputs you have available seem to be mapped to certain keyboard and mouse functions rather than gamepad buttons (there is a gamepad mode, but our gamepad inputs were not recognized). The streaming quality is very good and the latency is surprisingly low, but you might run into issues over a wireless connection, and the cost of streaming in such a manner could be quite taxing on your PC.
We tested the PC version of Destiny 2 over the Wireless Display app and found that the game — which normally hits 60 frames per second without an issue — was suddenly tanking down to 13 frames per second, thanks to the additional stress of encoding video to send over the wired local network. The app might work better for something a little more low-key, like a turn-based strategy game. But for your major first-person shooter franchises, you might find that the Wireless Display app hurts performance too much to be worthwhile.
Again, that's probably not what this app is meant for. It shows your PC display just fine, and if you're someone who wants to use the app for a presentation, or to extend your desktop, Wireless Display works like a charm. You just shouldn't expect something like a Steam Link, which seems to work far more reliably for that type of thing.
Microsoft's Wireless Display app is available in the Xbox Store right now — and, thank goodness, it's free.