Xbox One Can Let Users Play PS4 Through Console's HDMI on Split Screen
The Xbox One's HDMI pass through has no limit to what can be played through the console, even a PS4.
The original idea of the HDMI pass through was so Xbox users could watch cable effortlessly through their console, and even have it run side by side. With that in mind, the idea of running the PS4 through the console is totally possible, even playing the two systems at once on split screen.
The feature is called, "Snap," because of its premise of snapping together two apps into one.
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Xbox One executive Albert Panello hinted at the the possibility in a presentation according to Gamespot.
"Any application can be snapped to a game … this could be the live TV feed, so if you wanted to be playing Ryse and Killzone at the same time, you could snap that," he said.
Killzone is a game that is exclusive to Sony platforms.
This also works out for people who miss their Xbox 360 games and do not want to switch consoles back and fourth. The Xbox One does not have backwards compatibility, but now can hook up with the 360 through the HDMI port allowing for seamless switches.
However, even that may not be necessary because Microsoft hinted at the possibility of backwards compatibility through the cloud.
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 … 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," Microsoft Senior Director Albert Penello said to Gamespot when asked about old games being on a cloud service.
"The power of the cloud brings many possibilities on Xbox One. Albert was speaking theoretically about backwards compatibility as an example of the features the cloud could enable in the future," clarified Microsoft in a follow up statement.
The Xbox One is set for a Nov. 22 release in the U.S.
