Phil Spencer, the CEO of Microsoft Gaming and the head of the Xbox brand, has announced that Microsoft is ready to launch an Xbox mobile gaming store on Android and iOS as early as 2024.
Speaking in an interview with the Financial Times, Spencer acknowledges that while it is impossible at the moment to kickstart such an undertaking given how Google and Apple have walled up their devices against third-party app stores, he believes that in the near future, the two tech giants might be forced by regulatory bodies to make it easier for third-party app stores to compete by removing unnecessary restrictions.
At the moment, Apple does not allow third-party app stores on iOS. This was also the case for Google with its Android OS, until a recent ruling by India’s competition watchdog, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) which demanded that Google opens up its platform in the country.
“We want to be in a position to offer Xbox and content from both us and our third-party partners across any screen where somebody would want to play… Today, we can’t do that on mobile devices, but we want to build towards a world that we think will be coming where those devices are opened up,” explains Phil Spencer
The mobile gaming ecosystem is highly lucrative, with a game like Candy Crush Saga making more than one billion US dollars each year in 2021 and 2022 and made $857 million in 2020. If Microsoft’s plans are successful, both Candy Crush Saga and Call of Duty: Mobile as well as other games published by Activision and King will likely make their way to the new Xbox store.
“The Digital Markets Act that’s coming — those are the kinds of things that we are planning for. I think it’s a huge opportunity,” adds Spencer in relation to the EU Digital Markets Act that will force Apple and Google to change how they distribute apps on their OSes.
While Microsoft is very much a big player that can go head-to-head with Apple and Google, it will be interesting to see how smaller players would react in case the closed walls of iOS and Android are opened up, and what incentives these smaller players would be offered to put their games on the Google Play Store instead of the Xbox Store or the other way around.
