Gaming News
The Xbox Mobile Store Is Reportedly Releasing Next Year
The head of gaming at Microsoft says the Xbox mobile store is planned to be released in 2024.
In a previous post titled How Mobile Gaming Has Evolved, I spoke about the current state of mobile gaming. With this recent piece of news from Microsoft, mobile gaming will get a lot better.
According to Phil Spencer, the head of gaming at Microsoft, the company’s mobile games store may launch as early as next year.
This is due to the new Digital Markets Act, a legislation that requires Apple and Google to allow users on their platforms to access apps from sources other than the App Store and Google Play Store.
Spencer sees this as a “huge opportunity” for Xbox, and Microsoft wants to offer Xbox and content from third-party partners across any screen where someone would want to play.
Currently, Microsoft cannot do this on mobile devices, but it wants to build toward a future where those devices are opened up.
The Digital Markets Act was signed into law in September 2022 by the European Market and will officially become applicable on May 2. Microsoft has recently made a big push into the mobile gaming scene with its cloud gaming efforts.
The company’s plan to acquire Activision Blizzard is fueled primarily by its goal to increase its foothold in the mobile market.
If the deal is approved, Microsoft will own Candy Crush developer King and Call of Duty Mobile, lucrative properties in a market estimated to have 238.7 million “active” users in the US alone.
“We don’t have a lot of creative capability that has built hit mobile games. We really started the discussions, internally at least, on Activision Blizzard, on the capability they had on mobile, and then PC with Blizzard,” Spencer said last year. “Those were the two things that were really driving our interest.”
In related news, the European Commission has pushed back the provisional deadline to rule on Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard to April 25.
The European competition regulator is one of three key groups that Microsoft has to win over, alongside the United Kingdom’s Competition & Markets Authority and the US’s Federal Trade Commission.
The FTC is suing Microsoft to halt the deal, while a major cross-industry union, The Communication Workers of America, has urged the European Commission to accept the buyout.
Final Words
Microsoft is looking to expand its presence in the mobile gaming market and sees the Digital Markets Act as a way to achieve this goal.
The company’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is a significant step towards this objective, as it gives Microsoft access to successful mobile game developers and popular game franchises.
However, Microsoft still faces regulatory hurdles before it can proceed with the acquisition, and it remains to be seen how successful the company will be in launching its mobile games store in the future.
Nonetheless, the company’s efforts demonstrate a commitment to growing its gaming division and capitalizing on the mobile gaming market’s potential.
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