We first heard of ‘Arcadia’ back in December, a codename for an upcoming streaming service being worked on by the Operating Systems Group at Microsoft. Still, we know very little about the service. In a recent job posting, Microsoft says that the service will “delight [its] end users on Windows Mobile”.
Microsoft starts the job posting by asking: “Are you ready to work on a product that was NEVER done before?” Emphasis not added. That full caps ‘NEVER’ is completely Microsoft’s doing. The job posting doesn’t reveal any solid information unsurprisingly, they never tend to when they’re related to unannounced products.
“We use the best data tools available from both the Open Source community and Microsoft, on which we have built a highly elastic, near real time Arcadia data platform. We are implementing software health and consumer satisfaction models based on this data, to test in production and stabilize our deliverables incrementally.”
We’re scratching our heads too. Microsoft is looking to fill the position of a senior software engineer with at least 5 years of C++, C#, and Java experience, who is familiar with one or more of Watson, Cosmos, SQL, and BI tools, and who holds at least a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related discipline, or the equivalent in work experience.
Hopefully, we’ll get more details on the steaming service once Microsoft has hired all the right people and work on the project has commenced. Although it would be a safe to assume that should Arcadia come to light officially, it would be during, or after Windows 10 has launched. In the meantime, we’d love to hear your ideas on what Arcadia is. Is it something related to connecting mobile devices to virtual reality headsets like the HoloLens? Or is Microsoft planning on streaming Xbox games to phones? Sound off in the comments below.
