While Apple and Google are also slowly moving towards the TV with Apple TV and Google TV, also Microsoft is making its moves on this market. According to website TheVerge is Microsoft working on a low cost alternative to the Xbox game console. This set-top box should be designed to provide access to core entertainment services. It seems to part of Microsoft's strategy for their next generation Xbox, where they'll have a powerful full featured game console and a less powerful set-top box that does not support the CPU/GPU intensive gaming titles that will appear on the next generation Xbox.
The device should run on core components of Windows 8 and should support some form of casual gaming. It should be always on, meaning that it can quickly boot and resume to provide quick access to TV and entertainment services. TheVerge also reports that the device should be part of Microsoft's new Xbox strategy where the next generation Xbox will be scalable enough to run on a number of devices, where it can be equipped with code to make phone calls to run it on a phone or code to run standalone on TVs.
