Exciting news for those who love a mobile gaming experience, according to reports, Microsoft is working on an Xbox mobile gaming store to stand in direct completion with the Apple and Google equivalents. “Shifting consumers away from the Google Play Store and App Store on mobile devices will, however, require a major shift in consumer behaviour,” it reads. “Microsoft hopes that by offering well-known and popular content, gamers will be more inclined to try something new.”
This news emerged today because of fillings from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority because of Microsoft’s ongoing $68.7bn buyout of Activision Blizzard.
According to the fillings, a substantial driving force behind the acquisition is the success and popularity of Activision’s mobile games. Microsoft was quoted in the filling saying: “The transaction will improve Microsoft’s ability to create a next-generation game store which operates across a range of devices, including mobile as a result of the addition of Activision Blizzard’s content,” building on Activision Blizzard’s existing communities of gamers, Xbox will seek to scale the Xbox Store to mobile, attracting gamers to a new Xbox Mobile Platform.”
Microsoft looking to expand into mobile gaming is also in line with its current cloud gaming push and moving towards the next-generation gaming sore it first spoke about earlier in the year. The fillings also gave some clarity on how Microsoft is looking to run the platform, with the company hoping to attract developers by allowing them to freely run their own app stores on the Xboxmobile gaming platform and also offer their own payment systems for in-app purchases – something companies have been fighting Apple on for a good long while now.