Reports emerged earlier of Microsoft showing their cloud based streaming service to press during one of their events. They were demoing Halo 4 on a low-end Windows Phone. Further rumors have now emerged and are now calling the service’s name as “Rio”.

CNET heard from some of the industry insiders that Microsoft has named this new streaming service “Rio”. Another source added that it was originally codenamed “Ridgeway”. This not only solidifies the rumor of Microsoft launching a streaming service for their devices, it also sheds some light on its name.

Also read:

• Microsoft showing off their Azure-based cloud game streaming at annual company meeting

Blogger Paul Thurott has shared more info on this new streaming service. According to him, it has a latency of 45 ms; “which is probably OK for simple single-player gaming but is in fact pretty high for real-time multiplayer gaming,” says Paul Thurott on his site.

Microsoft seems to be competing with Sony’s Gaikai, which is another streaming service that will be used to provide backward compatibility for PlayStation 4. Microsoft’s streaming solution is based on Azure cloud streaming while Sony will be using their own Gaikai.

Stay tuned to GearNuke for latest news and info on this news.

http://gearnuke.com/rumor-microsofts-cloud-based-streaming-service-called-rio/

as far as names go,. i like it.

I hope this means a service similar to Gaikai on PS4. Although since MS is building this from the ground up I don't expect it anytime soon (2015? maybe)

Sony is using a Japanese cloud and Microsoft a Latin American one :D

So there is 2 types of clouds now?or just a new feature for the one and only cloud (azure)?

MS uses a lot Brazil's cities

BTW Rio didn't have many Cloud... more Sun

So basically it's microsofts version of gaikai.

Even though I talked about this before, there are 3 different types of cloud services and each service utilize different software to accomplish a task
Saas Software as a service. This is the type of service that Gaikai and this new Rio service from MS go under.
Iaas - Infrastructure as a service. Think of this one as hosting a bunch of servers or VMs.
Paas - This would be a platform for building cloud based application. Think of MS Orleans which is the basics of their cloud compute infrastructure.

MS Azure always did all of these different types of services and this is very basic as the infrastructure is really complex especially the software.

The interesting part is if MS is just using their rack of PCs or are they using specialize hardware like the Nvidia Grid.

MS is using xbox 360 SOC's likely to achieve backwards compatibility just like how gaikai does it. 

Someone at MS really must love Brazilian cities. Natal, Fortaleza, Rio....