Xbox has a dedicated hardware team and we've already seen numerous Xbox and controller prototypes come out of the company's brain trust. But this time, it's a leak from Project Keystone that comes to us, a specific device that the boss of Xbox had confirmed some time ago as having really existed.
Xbox Keystone, a console already seen on the Xbox boss's shelf
The Xbox Keystone project has already been the subject of numerous articles in the columns of Xboxygen. The name Keystone arrived in June 2022 when Windowscentral sources mentioned a small rectangular or square console dedicated solely to streaming gaming. It would have been sold for around a hundred euros, but ultimately never saw the light of day.
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And then four months later, the boss of Xbox let this Xbox Keystone console appear on the shelf of his office captured in an image. At the time, and faced with numerous questions about this new device, Phil Spencer had to justify himself by indicating that it was only a prototype.
Keystone was something we were incubating internally. In late spring, we pivoted to instead work with Samsung. I still have the prototype… will we make a streaming device at some point? I think we will, but not for years.
Xbox Keystone: a patent details the console we will never see
Although we were able to see a small piece of this new console on Phil Spencer's shelf, it is only today that we are finally discovering what it could have looked like as a whole thanks to a Patent pending by Microsoft and spotted by Windows Central.
As expected, the console came in the shape of a square with a circle on top, similar to the black circular vent found on the Xbox Series S. The front of the machine featured a power button and a USB-A port, which we could see in Phil Spencer's photo at the time.
The back of the Xbox Keystone, very logically, was dedicated to the machine's power supply, its connection to the Internet via an Ethernet port as well as an HDMI port.
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The release of this Xbox console dedicated to cloud gaming has therefore not seen the light of day, but nothing says that Microsoft will not try the experience again later when the market is a little more mature.