Microsoft confirms work on the Xbox Store to compete with the kiosks of Apple and Google

You may soon be able to download games from the Xbox Store on iOS and Android. As we announced at the end of February, Microsoft could soon offer its own mobile app store on iPhone and Android smartphones. This was just confirmed by the head of the Xbox division, Phil Spencer in an interview with the Financial Times ahead of the annual conference dedicated to game developers held in San Francisco.

Xbox Store for iOS and Android

By March 2024, a new European regulation, which plans to force major digital players to open their platforms to competition, will come into force. Microsoft intends to adapt to this breach to try and get its share of the pie. The Redmond company is already working on an app store for iOS and Android, but it will be entirely dedicated to gaming.

“We want to be able to deliver Xbox content and our partners’ content to any screen someone might want to play on. […] Today we can’t do it on mobile devices but we want to create a situation that we think will come from the openness of the devices” Phil Spencer said.

According to Phil Spencer, porting the Xbox and Game Pass apps to mobile platforms would be “pretty trivial”. Above all, being open to competition from Android, and in particular from iOS, would allow Microsoft to attract new mobile players. Because until now, the Redmond company had a problem with Apple, preventing them from making Xbox Game Pass work properly on iPhones. Due to the current rules of Apple and its App Store, Microsoft was unable to offer a dedicated app to allow Xbox Game Pass subscribers to take full advantage of the service from their iPhone. To get around this limitation, gamers have no choice but to log into Microsoft’s cloud gaming platform from a web browser. Thus, the arrival of the Xbox Store on iOS, thanks to the new European regulations, should solve the problem.

However, Microsoft has not been able to give an exact date when the Xbox Store will be available on iOS and Android. Because before it can realize this dream, Microsoft will have to wait for the decision of the various regulatory authorities regarding its acquisition of Activision Blizzard.