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Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, has teased a new tier for Xbox Game Pass, as well as hinting that TV streaming sticks may be coming to its xCloud service.
As The Verge reports, Spencer spoke about the future of the Xbox ecosystem and the potential for additional Game Pass tiers in an interview with Stratechery (paywall).
"I think you're going to see lower-priced hardware as part of our ecosystem when you think about streaming sticks and other things that somebody might want to just go plug into their TV and go play via xCloud," Spencer says.
The head of Xbox goes on to say the streaming stick could be included in the Game Pass subscription to give you the ability to stream xCloud games to your TV. Spencer also teases a new tier of the Game Pass, which may potentially be called "Xbox Game Pass Platinum", and would provide you with guaranteed access to new hardware.
Xbox has been promoting Game Pass alongside the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, and the subscription continues to expand with the recent news that EA Play subscriptions will be included in Game Pass on November 10 at no additional cost.
The cloud gaming service xCloud launched as part of Game Pass Ultimate subscriptions on September 15. Now available on Android devices, it has yet to release on iOS on account of Apple's updated terms of service. The terms stated that every game included in the streaming service would require its own dedicated page that would be purchased directly through the app store.
The Verge recently also reported that Microsoft was working on a solution to bring xCloud to iOS via the web. In the interview with Stratechery, Spencer also says that Microsoft has a "good solution on iOS", and added, "I think it'll be coming kind of early next year".
Here's our pick of the best games on Xbox Game Pass to play right now or check out all of the upcoming Xbox Series X launch games in the video below.
