Phil Spencer talks about the model dedicated to streaming

Phil Spencer talks about the model dedicated to streaming

Last month, Phil Spencer leaked a photo in which you could see a mysterious white box that looks just like the Xbox Series S. According to Tom Warren of The Verge, it was Keystone (name of code) which, ultimately, should not take the form of a key to be inserted into an HDMI port as we thought, but of a box. Since our colleagues had the opportunity to speak recently with the head of the Xbox division as part of their Decoder podcastthey took the opportunity to ask him about this device dedicated to streaming and which is not yet available on the market.

Keystone, the console we designed and everyone saw, cost more than we wanted when we developed it with the hardware inside, which is why we decided to focus our efforts on an application adapted to Smart TVs [Xbox Cloud Gaming, ndlr]he detailed. We still keep Keystone and having it priced right in the back of our minds, but when you sell the Xbox Series S for $299 – by the way, during the holidays you’ll see promotions – and the Xbox Series X at a higher price, I think that for an offer essentially geared towards streaming to be coherent, the price difference with the Xbox Series S must be significant. And then, when the device is ready for sale, I want it to come with a controller.

Naturally, one wonders what price Microsoft would consider appropriate. “I don’t want to announce any particular price, but in my opinion, a price between $99 and $129 would be fairhe said. And with the included controller, we weren’t there. In any case, I salute the efforts made. Besides, the reason the device was on my shelf is simply because the teams worked hard for nine months to build it. Some of us have even taken it home to test it out, and I can tell you it works really well. It’s always the same thing when you develop a new product: is the design the right one, is the user interface perfect, is the offer made to the customer the best. And that offer to the customer includes the price, and I think we all knew that on that point we weren’t well positioned.

Without wanting to go into technical considerations, Phil Spencer also said that the fact that Keystone is not powered by the TV but by another source of energy represented an additional constraint. Despite everything, he considers that the object is easy to use. It remains to be seen when Microsoft will decide to take the plunge.




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