Summary
A newly discovered patent has given us our first look at theXbox Keystone, a home console that focused on cloud streaming which was ultimately scrapped due to struggles over pricing.
We all know that Xbox is goingpretty hard on cloud streaming, as it seems that the company strongly believes that’s where gaming is heading, as it distances itself from its own hardware. Once upon a time, Xbox attempted to capitalize on the emerging popularity of cloud gaming with the Xbox Keystone, a small console that would have acted similar to Amazon’s Fire TV Sticks and Boxes, but for all your gaming needs.
It seemed as though things were going fairly well in development, at least well enough for Phil Spencer tosneakily include the console on his shelf in tweets, though the project hit a snag due to pricing. In an interview back in 2022, Spencer claimed that Microsoft couldn’t get the Xbox Keystone down to a price that made sense, explaining thatit was “more expensive than we wanted it to be.“We’ve heard nothing about the console since then, suggesting Microsoft decided to cut its losses and cancel it.
Microsoft Patent Reveals First Look At Xbox Keystone Streaming Console
Before today, all we could do was squint our eyes and stare at Spencer’s shelf to see what the console looked like, buta new patentdiscovered byWindows Centralhas finally given us a proper look. Three images of the Xbox Keystone were included in the patent, one from the front, and two from the top and bottom.
From these images, we can see that the Xbox Keystone would have been a perfect square, and would have included your standard Ethernet, power, and HDMI ports on the back. There would have been a power button and a USB-A port on the front, while there is what appears to be a button to sync up an Xbox controller on the side. In terms of design, it’s very similar to the Xbox Series S, sporting a black circular disc on top of an all-white console.
While it’s not exactly revelatory, and includes all the ports and features you’d expect from an Xbox cloud gaming console, it’s interesting to see what could have been. While the Xbox Keystone looks pretty much dead and buried at this point, there’s always a chance that Microsoft could use the tech on something else,such as a handheld console that has been teased fairly recently. The Nintendo Switch has various titles run off the cloud, and Microsoft’s strives in the area would certainly be more impressive. We’ll have to wait and see what is actually being cooked up.
