Microsoft wants to tickle the Play Store and the App Store by developing a mobile game store. This is one of the revelations that came out of the discussions within the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA): the British competition authority must rule on the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft.
The Windows publisher defends its piece of fat, explaining that this 69 billion dollar transaction (!) gives it the possibility of creating ” the new generation of game store that will work on a large number of devices, including mobiles “.
This new Xbox Mobile Platform would be the version for smartphones of the Xbox Store which will allow “ divert consumers from the Google Play Store and App Store on mobile devices “. But to get there, Microsoft must slip Activision Blizzard into its pocket. For a very good reason: the studio’s mobile games are a hit, so much so that they represent the bulk of the company’s income.
Activision Blizzard’s mobile games earn more than the studio’s PC and console games
Call of Duty: Mobile and games from the King studio (Candy Crush Saga), owned by Activision, are behemoths on iOS as on Android. Microsoft hopes to be able to rely on these boxes to attract players on smartphones. And then this prospect of an alternative store has something to appeal to developers and other publishers as well.
Microsoft indeed intends to apply to this mobile game store the same principles that befit the Microsoft Store on Windows… and which are diametrically opposed to those of Apple. Developers will be able to distribute their own app stores there and use the payment system of their choice.
Microsoft establishes the main principles of its application store, at the antipodes of the App Store
There would be enough to catch the eye of a lot of game publishers, tired of the commissions paid to Apple and Google and the mistakes of the two shopkeepers. Epic may well be interested, as the studio has developed a version of Fortnite for Xbox Cloud Gaming compatible with iOS!
There is therefore potential and if this project should have no trouble seeing the light of day on Android, good luck getting the green light from Apple, which refuses to allow an application distributed on the App Store to act as a store of apps. Microsoft was already ready for anything for its Xbox Cloud Gaming iOS application, but in the face of Apple’s stubbornness it had to give it up. The service now goes through a web app.
Microsoft was ready to make any concessions to have Xbox Cloud Gaming in the App Store
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