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 boss of the Xbox division as part of their Decoder podcast, they took the opportunity to ask him about this device dedicated to streaming and which is not yet available. on the market.
Vault Boy left the shelter and stopped by my office to celebrate the #Fallout25 Anniversary. Congratulations to the @Fallout @Bethesda teams on this major milestone for an iconic franchise. pic.twitter.com/hGoN1sAQRK
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) October 10, 2022
"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 always keep Keystone and the fact of offering it at the right price in the back of our minds, but when you sell the Xbox Series S$299 - by the way, during the holidays you will see promotions - and the Xbox Series X at a higher price, I think that in order for an essentially streaming-oriented offer to be consistent, the price difference with the Xbox Series S has to be meaningful. 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 fair, he said. And with the controller included, we weren't there. Anyway , I salute the effort put in. In fact, the reason the device was on my shelf is simply because the teams worked so hard for nine months to build it. even took it home to test it, and I can tell you it works really well. It's always the same thing when you're designing a new product: is the design right, is the user interface perfect, is the offer made to the customer the best. And that offer made to the customer includes the price, and I think we all knew that on that point we were not 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.
