In an interview with Stratechery, Xbox head Phil Spencer has hinted that we could yet see their Xbox Game Pass streaming service rollout for televisions in the form of streaming sticks. Spencer also discussed the potential for additional tiers for their Xbox Game Pass service which, most recently, had Ultimate become the highest-priced subscription available.
“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.”
It’s all speculative and certainly doesn’t allude to any concrete plans the company might have, the company has in the past done extensive research into streaming sticks and more lightweight streaming devices although none of those efforts have seen a result.
Spencer also suggested the company could experiment with a new tier to its Xbox Game Pass service, one he dubbed ‘Platinum’ and would, according to his vision, include new hardware as well as access to its revolving-door library of Game Pass titles. Given their efforts in launching Xbox All Access, which lets players pay the hardware off without the interest gouge, not unlike modern mobile phone plans, we could easily see this being true in time.
Xbox Game Pass launched its cloud-streaming service in September. However, it isn’t coming to our shores until early next year.
(Thanks, Polygon.)
