We’re less than a month away from the release of the much-hyped next-gen consoles in the form of the PS5 and the Xbox Series X/S and the hits just keep on coming. In a recent interview with Stratechery, Phil Spender, Head of gaming and Xbox, Microsoft, announced that the company is looking at bolstering its xCloud service with a TV streaming stick. He also talked about how different plans on Xbox Game Pass could come with a TV stick for xCloud games. Spencer also went on say that, “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 subscription that gave you an ability to stream xCloud games to your television and buying the controller.”
So, what’s the deal with this TV streaming stick? Well, from what we can tell, it looks like the TV stick will connect to xCloud and allow you to stream games straight to your TV. You’ll need a controller to play these games, of course. As internet connections get better over time, the idea of games streaming service sounds more plausible. After all, Stadia fell flat on its face when it was released as it did not work as intended. Hopefully, this TV stick from Microsoft will do the trick.
In fact, we reported that xCloud would come as a part of the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, back in July. Basically, the Xbox Blog broke it all down saying, “Cloud gaming in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate means your games are no longer locked to the living room. You can connect more than ever with friends and family through gaming. And just like you do with your movie and music streaming services, when cloud gaming launches into Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, you can continue your game wherever you left off on any of your devices”