Microsoft is launching its rival to Apple and Google’s app stores in July.
Xbox president Sarah Bond announced the web store during a talk at the Bloomberg Technology Summit, stating that it would host Microsoft’s first party content first, and partner titles sometime after launch.
Bond said Microsoft’s intention is to “facilitate gaming across consoles, computers and mobile devices”, and the Xbox mobile store enables users to carry their game library, identity and rewards across platforms, rather than “being locked to a single ecosystem”. It’ll be a web store at first, Bond confirmed.
“In July, we are going to be launching our mobile store experience,” Bond said in the video below, posted by Bloomberg. “We’re going to start actually by bringing our own first party portfolio to that, so you’re going to see games like Candy Crush show up in that experience, games like Minecraft, and then we’re going to extend that capability to partners so that they can also take advantage of it and have a true cross platform gaming-centric mobile experience.”
Bond continued: “We’re going to start on the web, and we’re doing that because that really allows us to have it be an experience that’s accessible across all devices, all countries, no matter what, independent of the policies of closed ecosystem stores. And then we’re going to extend from there.”
Alongside Epic Games, which also plans to launch its game store in the EU this year, Microsoft will attempt to offer an alternative to the Apple and Google stores that have dominated the mobile game industry since its inception.
Microsoft has been teasing an Xbox mobile game store for months. In February, Xbox boss Phil Spencer spoke of a ‘gamer-first’ app store, and said that the tech giant is discussing the idea with partners.
Both Spencer and Bond have also been critical of Apple’s response to the EU’s Digital Markets Act too, which was designed to open up competition among digital storefronts. Spencer said Apple’s new terms, announced in January, “definitely don’t go far enough to open up competition”.
Bond, meanwhile, said on X: “We believe constructive conversations drive change and progress towards open platforms and greater competition. Apple’s new policy is a step in the wrong direction. We hope they listen to feedback on their proposed plan and work towards a more inclusive future for all.”
As we wrote back in January, Xbox might be one of few tech giants that can meaningfully break mobile’s app store duopoly. We now know that July marks the beginning of that effort.
