Although the acquisition of Activision Blizzard last year brought to the Microsoft portfolio game franchises such as Diablo, WarCraft, StarCraft or Call of Duty, one of the main reasons why the company spent more than 70 billion dollars was King, the company that produces the games candy crush mobile. The company justified this purchase both from the perspective of strengthening the Xbox division, but also through the desire to enter the market of mobile application stores. Following an interview given by Xbox President Sarah Bond at the Bloomberg Technology Summit, we now know more about Microsoft’s plans for mobile game stores.
Microsoft wants to distribute iOS and Android games and apps through a “web-based” store
It seems that plans for this “shop” are quite advanced. Bond confirmed that Microsoft plans to launch this new games and apps store sometime in July of this year, but he also offered one key detail that may cast doubt on how it will work.
It seems that Microsoft will not release an “app” for Android and iOS that can be downloaded from the Internet, installed, and then provide access to other applications that are downloaded individually to smartphones. Microsoft wants the user experience of its app store to be much more intuitive and not require going through platform approval processes or certain limitations imposed by Apple or Google. So Microsoft’s mobile app store will work 100% in the browser.
Maybe it won’t just be accessible from the browser, perhaps being accessed as a “progressive” web app in the phone’s menu, but it will be based on a web page in the cloud. Thus, this store could be accessed on “all” devices, from all countries, without limitations.
Of course, the games that will be hosted there will be from King, such as Candy Crush Saga, and using the Microsoft store, in-game purchases will be cheaper. Minecraft will also be hosted here. The company says that initially the apps and games in its store will be those produced internally, but over time it will begin to list others produced by partners.
It is not clear, however, whether the games will be able to be downloaded locally or if they will run via streaming, as we have seen on the Xbox Cloud Gaming service. It is certain that Microsoft has a completely different idea than Epic Games, which wants a “classic” application store that will be able to be installed on the iPhone only in Europe, where the Apple company was forced to open the “gates” of the system of iOS operation.
