Xbox Explains Decision to Abandon Plans for Keystone Streaming Console

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has discussed the thinking behind Microsoft’s decision to abandon their plans to release a streaming-only version of its games console, for now, which was confirmed back in May.

The project, known as Keystone, as the topic of conversation as Spencer was interviewed on an episode of The Verge’s Decoder podcast.

“The console we built that now people have seen, Keystone, was more expensive than we wanted it to be when we actually built it out with the hardware that we had inside, and we decided to focus that team’s efforts on delivering the smart TV streaming app” Spencer explained.

Microsoft announced a partnership with Samsung earlier this year to bring an Xbox Cloud Gaming app to Samsung’s Smart TVs and Spencer said that the company is “really happy with the results there” thus far.

Spencer added that Xbox is “still focused” on the project but that pricing has proven to be difficult as they try to align it appropriately within the market.

“I don’t want to announce pricing specifically, but I think you’ve got to be $129, $99, like somewhere in there for [Keystone] to make sense in my view, that we just weren’t there,” Spencer said. “We weren’t there with the controller. And I love the effort. The reason it’s on my shelf is the team rolled up their sleeves and in nine months they built that thing. And a bunch of us took it home and it worked. It worked really, really well.”