A new discovered patent shows exactly what the Keystone console from Xbox would’ve looked like if it hadn’t been cancelled. Back at the start of this generation, it seemed like Game Pass and streaming would come to dominate the future plans for Xbox, but reality hasn’t quite worked out like that. Game Pass, and game subscription services in general, haven’t taken off quite the way that was expected and streaming is now rarely even mentioned in terms of gaming, even though Microsoft has an enormous advantage with the technology.
At one point they were planning to make a dedicated streaming box, that could be used instead of an Xbox Series X/S to stream and play games, but it was later cancelled and it’s only now that a patent has described exactly what it would’ve been. Codenamed Keystone , the device was never formally announced, although a prototype did cameo in a video from Xbox boss Phil Spencer and was, as you’d expect, just a small innocuous looking box. The whole point of streaming is that you need nothing special in terms of hardware, just a device to stream through and, ideally, a controller.
A smartphone or tablet would do fine, and is what millions of people use for videos and music, but if you want to play on your TV then some kind of set-top box is ideal, and that’s what Keynote would’ve been, according to the patent . Although it was never announced to the public, Spencer did openly acknowledge that Keystone exists, admitting in 2022 that it had.
