In a recent interview with Stratechery [paywall], Phil Spencer spoke about the future of xCloud.
Aside from having the streaming service on your phone, Xbox is also looking to have it stream to your TV;
“I think you’re going to see lower-priced hardware as part of our ecosystem when you think about streaming sticks [and other things] that somebody might want to just go plug into their TV and go play via xCloud. You could imagine us even having something that we just included in the Game Pass that gave you an ability to stream xCloud games to your television…”.
via The Verge
The potential is that you’ll be able to have fully-fledged, Xbox-sourced streaming going straight to your TV. Which is a handy concept when you consider how small some smartphone screens are. This move would certainly put Xbox more inline with intended rivals Google and Amazon, who both have their own services [the upcoming Luna, from Amazon, and, of course, Google Stadia].
The concept is nothing new to Microsoft. The tech giant toyed with the idea of streaming sticks nearly a decade ago. Now though, with cloud-based gaming more of a reality, it’s a lot more feasible. We’ll have to wait and see what the future holds, of course.
Currently, xCloud streaming is limited to Android devices as part of the Game Pass Ultimate. Whether the potential streaming sticks would be incorporated into a higher price bracket service also remains to be seen [the rumoured “Game Pass Platinum”].
ABG’s Senior Editor (News), YouTube content creator/streamer.