San Francisco, Oct 24 (IANS): Microsoft's head of gaming and Xbox, Phil Spencer, has said the company is planning TV streaming sticks for its xCloud gaming service.

In an interview with Stratechery, Spencer discussed the potential for additional tiers of Xbox Game Pass, which could include a free bundled TV stick to play xCloud games.

"I think you are 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 said.

"You could imagine us even having something that we just included in the Game Pass subscription that gave you an ability to stream xCloud games to your TV and buying the controller," he added.

This is not the first time there has been talks about an Xbox streaming stick.

Back in 2016, it was rumoured that Microsoft would release a Chromecast-style streaming dongle that was developed using the codename Project Hobart. However, the company for some reason decided to cancel the device before it could even be released to the public.

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.