Recent reports suggest that Microsoft’s ‘next big thing’, a game and app-streaming service codenamed Arcadia, is moving along. The service will allow Windows devices to stream games from the Azure cloud platform.

The rumors surfaced following a report by ZNET’s Microsoft expert Mary Jo Foley, in which she writes about the discovery of job postings mentioning this ‘next big thing’ – technology the Redmond company has kept under a veil of secrecy. The main focus of Arcadia would likely be to provide a streaming service in which Xbox One users could stream games to phones and tablets, or from their PCs. This kind of game-streaming is already being developed by Sony, whose Gaikai platform allows Playstation 4, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita users to stream games remotely through its Playstation Now service – still in Beta.

Arcadia would take over from the Rio game-streaming technology initiative, which demonstrated how games such as Halo 4 with “Xbox-level visual quality” could be streamed to tablets and phones.  The technology would also not be too dissimilar from the console-class game-streaming service, Onlive, a cloud-gaming provider that has had its fair share of problems. Streaming games in general has been a labored work-in-progress for some time, with many users complaining of lags and blackouts due to lost connections, not to mention constant updates and server problems.

But let’s not be too skeptical, yet.

Arcadia could offer more perks to gamers, Foley suggests, enabling users to stream previous non-compatible Xbox edition games to their Xbox One, as well as making it possible to stream apps and games to iOs and Android devices.

While from the job postings we know that Microsoft is looking for candidates to work with a streaming team “to ship something that’s never been shipped before”, the listings don’t give away much more. Foley doesn’t think the technology will be revealed right now, although it’s likely we’ll hear something in the near future. She writes, “It might be a bit early in the development cycle for Microsoft to take the wraps off Arcadia. My bet is Arcadia is a post-Windows 10 deliverable.” Microsoft has yet to comment on the rumors.

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