In a recent interview at Gamescom 2023, Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft's Xbox business, revealed that a game software marketplace will be available for mobile platforms as early as 2024.
Earlier, in 2022, Microsoft submitted aFile contentIn the game, it was revealed that its Xbox online collection will not only include Xbox platform consoles and Windows PC games, but will also cover mobile game content in the future.
In addition to Apple and Google actively cultivating the mobile game market, Microsoft has actually been watching for opportunities to enter the mobile game market.
However, compared to the scale of development of Apple and Google in the mobile phone hardware and software market, although Microsoft also entered the mobile phone market with the Windows Phone brand, it ultimately ended in failure, and thus missed the opportunity to develop the mobile game market.
However, with Microsoft announcing its $687 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which includes King, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, this British online gaming company, which once attracted a large number of players with "Candy Crush Saga", may become a new driving force for Microsoft's layout in the mobile game market.
Phil Spencer explained that Microsoft's gaming market strategy, in addition to continuing to strengthen its presence in the PC and console markets, is expected to expand into mobile platforms. Microsoft also sees momentum in the mobile gaming market and hopes to strengthen its presence there, thereby ensuring the Xbox brand has a certain degree of penetration across all gaming platforms.
In fact, Microsoft has already begun bringing Xbox Game Pass games to mobile platforms via cloud streaming via the Xbox Cloud Gaming service. Furthermore, according to Phil Spencer, Microsoft's plans aren't simply porting Xbox games to mobile platforms, but rather extending them to allow players to access a richer selection of gaming content across multiple platforms, similar to how Netflix is expanding its original TV and film content through mobile games, or supplementing content not yet expressed in games.
Phil Spencer hopes to break the impression that the Xbox brand is only focused on game consoles. Therefore, he hopes to strengthen players' stickiness to the Xbox brand through different platforms. Especially now that more and more gamers play games in their spare time, strengthening the mobile platform layout will obviously become an important next step in the development of the Xbox brand. However, it is obviously not as simple as just bringing Xbox platform games to mobile platforms.
