Xbox boss Phil Spencer should really know by now that his interior décor is under intense scrutiny after that time he secretly revealed the Xbox Series S months early. But no, the man had the audacity this morning to send fans into a spin with a full-frame photo on Twitter of a set of shelves containing what seemed to be an even smaller console not dissimilar to the Series S.
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
Naturally, internet sleuths went wild with theories and multiple outlets began positing that this could be the dedicated Game Pass streaming device that Xbox has been talking about for some time. This device was once destined to be a “Stick” format similar to the Amazon Fire TV but Microsoft had since revealed that they’ve pivoted away from that design to a new concept.
It makes sense that something that looks like an even more miniaturised version of the Xbox Series S would make for a nice-looking little device dedicated to streaming-only gameplay through Game Pass, but it seems that Microsoft has already shut these rumours down.
The company has confirmed to Kotaku that “the device on Spencer’s shelf is an older prototype” as well as replied to Phil’s tweet with a statement to the same effect:
Now what did we say about putting old prototypes on your shelf boss
— Xbox (@Xbox) October 10, 2022
For what it’s worth, Game Pass has slowly been creeping its way onto smart devices without the need for any kind of external device at all, like the dedicated app on Samsung’s new TVs or its place on Logitech’s handheld cloud streaming device. So it could very well be that we never see a formal hardware solution and Xbox instead spreads its Game Pass mission this way.
The moral of this story, though? Phil needs to watch what he puts on his shelves (there’s some nice stuff on these ones, otherwise!)
