One of the most interesting features that both Microsoft and Sony are trying to implement in the next generation of consoles is the ability to have cloud streaming of games from past systems on to the new consoles. This would make it so the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, which are not backwards compatible, could play Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games. However, the ability for gamers to do this may be far off, at least for the Xbox One.

Albert Penello, speaking to Polygon about cloud streaming games, revealed that the recent demo of Halo 4 being streamed to an Xbox One was very successful, but did not represent the ease that Microsoft can implement the feature:

"In the world of things I wish they had not shown at the Company Meeting because I knew I'd be asked about it later, put that at the top of my list...That is a good example, in certain circumstances [the cloud streaming] worked really awesome."

Penello is rather pessimistic about the technology so far, saying that many things can go wrong with cloud streaming games and that it will require some serious patience from gamers when it starts:

"It's really cool and really problematic, all at the same time, insofar as it's really super cool if you happen to have the world's most awesome internet connection. It works way better than you'd expect it to. So managing quality of service, the tolerance people will have for it being crappy. Can you imagine, in this day and age, with the bad information around, and we can't control the quality of that experience and make sure it's good, or have to tell people they can't do it?"

Despite the difficulty that cloud streaming games will bring to the company, Penello is sure that the feature will eventually reach its potential, and he revealed his interest in how well the PlayStation 4's Gaikai cloud streaming service will fare when it is launched:

"It was a grand experiment, I know we did a lot of work behind it, and we said this is one of the things where the network just has to get better before we can do it. When that happens, you're going to have a really interesting conversation around that, can I actually run Xbox One games that way as well...I'll be really interested to see how our friends in the Bay Area [at PlayStation] deal with this problem. But I can tell you, it's totally possible. We like it, we're fans of the cloud. We're not shy about that."