Xbox's Spencer teases cloud gaming TV streaming stick

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has said that the company could make streaming sticks for its cloud gaming streaming service.

In an interview with Stratechery – as reported by The Verge – the Microsoft exec said that it's possible we'll see cheaper tech that can just plug into a TV for use with the streaming platform.

“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,” Spencer said.

“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.”

The exec also suggested the company could do an 'Xbox Game Pass Platinum' tier, which would include new hardware as well as access to its Game Pass library.

Xbox's cloud gaming streaming service (formerly known as xCloud) launched in September after being in beta for almost a year. Ahead of its release, we described it as "a next-generation experience" in our review.

Spencer has said in the past that xCloud isn't designed to replace traditional consoles, but rather was meant to complement this hardware. The service is included in its Xbox Game Pass Ultimate tier as of September of this year.

Xbox cloud gaming is just one of many games streaming services to hit the market in the last year. In November 2019, Google released its own Stadia platform – though you can be forgiven for having completely forgotten about it – while Nvidia's GeForce Now left beta in February of this year.

Then there's Amazon's own Luna service, which was announced last month.