The Xbox mobile gaming store launches soon
Plans for an Xbox mobile gaming store were leaked via filings for the Activision Blizzard acquisition in 2022, revealing that Microsoft intended to “scale the Xbox Store to mobile, attracting gamers to a new Xbox Mobile Platform.”
Microsoft is now ready to launch the store, which will arrive in July, but as a web-based service instead of a conventional app. According to Sarah Bond in an interview with Bloomberg, having the Xbox mobile gaming store as a website ensures that it’s “accessible across all devices, all countries, no matter what, independent of the policies of closed ecosystem stores.” Bond does say that Microsoft intends to “expand from there,” so a dedicated app could be on the cards in the future.
“In July we are going to be launching our mobile store experience,” Bond said. “We’re going to start actually by bringing our own first-party portfolio to that. So, you’re going to see games like Candy Crush show up in that experience and games like Minecraft. And then we’re going to extend that capability to partners so that they can also take advantage of it and have a true cross-platform gaming-centric mobile experience.”
Much like the current Xbox ecosystem, Microsoft is creating the mobile store to be “a gaming platform and store experience that is centered around players and goes truly across devices, where who you are, your library, your identity, your rewards that it travels with you versus being locked to a single ecosystem.”
When the Xbox mobile gaming store launches, only Xbox’s first-party games will be available, but Team Green plans to “get partners shortly after launch,” so it might not be much of wait until third-party games begin showing up.
“We really want to make sure we start at scale using our own IP first,” Bond said. “That allows us to make sure that the experience that we bring partners into really builds on all the quality and learning that we have as a team.”
Shortly after the Activision Blizzard acquisition was completed, Sean said he hoped the addition of mobile-gaming giant King would spark an Xbox achievements renaissance on mobile. While we had hoped Mighty Doom would get some achievements with the launch of the mobile store, that hope has been squashed, as Microsoft is closing Alpha Dog Games and sunsetting Mighty Doom.
