Bear in mind Microsoft’s Xbox cloud gaming machine, codenamed Keystone? The one which acquired introduced in 2021, was cancelled in its authentic type a 12 months later, then confirmed up on Phil Spencer’s shelf after that, bamboozling everybody? Nicely should you’ve ever questioned what it may have regarded like in additional element, a newly surfaced patent may need some solutions.
The patent in query was initially filed with the US Patent and Trademark Workplace in June 2022 – a number of months after Microsoft introduced it might not be continuing with Keystone in its present type – and options designs for a proposed machine solely known as an “digital console machine”. There’s nothing explicitly linking to the doc to Keystone, however Home windows Central claims that is exactly what it’s.
A side-by-side comparability with the “previous prototype” model of Keystone that appeared on Phil Spencer’s desk in October 2022 additionally helps that declare, with each the patent and prototype model that includes the identical entrance panel.
The patent, nonetheless, reveals much more of the design Microsoft was at one level apparently contemplating for its cloud streaming video games console. It bears a lot in widespread with the present Xbox Sequence S, albeit with that machine’s horizontal footprint compacted into sq.. It is also pictured with an Xbox Sequence X-style “Hey from Seattle” plate on its backside.
As for the ports on this proposed type – attributed to principal Microsoft designer Chris Kujawski – there’s an Xbox button and USB port on the entrance, a controller pairing button one one facet, plus HDMI, ethernet, and energy connectors to the rear. And apart from an entire bunch of heat-dissipating holes, that is your lot – no particulars of the machine’s innards are revealed within the patent.
When Microsoft addressed the progress of Keystone again in Could 2022, it mentioned it had “made the choice to pivot away from the present iteration” of the machine, and would refocus its efforts on a “new method”. Xbox boss Phil Spencer later confirmed the undertaking had been canned as a result of it was “dearer than we wished it to be once we really constructed it out with the {hardware} that we had inside” – and that Microsoft’s “new method” was its Xbox TV app, enabling customers to stream Xbox Cloud Gaming titles at 1080p and as much as 60fps.
So whereas Xbox’s square-shaped goals of a devoted cloud gaming console are maybe lengthy useless, its ambitions within the recreation streaming area are removed from over.