This week, Microsoft is in Los Angeles where the company announced that they acquired five gaming studios and that they are working on next-gen consoles as well as a new game streaming service.

Phil Spencer said that the company’s cloud engineers are working to bring console-quality games streaming to any device. Microsoft already allows in-home game streaming with its Xbox console and the Xbox app on the PC and this streaming service is a natural extension of that experience. It’s also not hard to imagine that the streaming service will be linked to Xbox Game Pass too.

Spencer also confirmed that the company is working on new iterations of the Xbox console but this shouldn’t come as a big surprise. I have been told that the codename for the next series of devices is currently Scarlett but I don’t know a timeline for release at this time.

But, seeing as streaming is going to be a focus, the company’s mixed reality headsets are evolving to have more features and applications, and the company’s ability to have one game run on multiple platforms, it’s not too hard to imagine what the company may include in the next iteration of the console hardware.

Any way you look at it, Microsoft has put a considerable amount of effort into making the Xbox brand exciting and the future looks promising for those invested in the ecosystem.

Update: After reviewing some internal docs, it’s Scarlett, with two t’s, not one.

Tagged with Game Streaming, scarlett, Xbox, Xbox One