It had been rumored (including by the Xbox team themselves) for about year now that the Xbox team were working on an Xbox based Streaming dongle that would let you play Xbox Cloud Gaming and would compete with the likes of Roku, Chromecast (and other AndroidTV devices), Fire TV and Apple TV. It looks like the team has decided that now is not the right time to jump into this crowded space.
Tom Warren from the Verge has reported that the project (codenamed “Keystone”) has been scuttled. This is based on comments from Phil Spencer himself earlier today.
It’s easy to take this as a sign that Microsoft isn’t ready to push forward on cloud gaming. But, I think it is more likely the case that Microsoft simply decided the better path forward was to release apps on various Smart TV platforms (Tizen, WebOS, AndroidTV, FireTV, etc…) than to release a new competing hardware product when they also have the fairly affordably priced Xbox Series S already on the market.
Time will tell how quickly they expand beyond support for Samsung TVs to other apps. We here at Cloud Dosage are hoping for an Android TV app – especially for the Shield TV and Chromecast with Google TV
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