Xbox President Sarah Bond has made a groundbreaking announcement about the Xbox mobile app.
She shared this statement on Twitter today:
“The court’s ruling to open up Google´s mobile store in the US will allow more choice and flexibility.
Our mission is to allow more players to play on more devices so we are thrilled to share that starting in November, players will be able to play and purchase Xbox games directly from the Xbox App on Android.”
The court ruling that Bond is alluding to was the victory Epic Games won earlier this week against Google. That legal victory is opening the door for third party developers to do business on the Android platform in various ways that were not allowed by Google before.
Microsoft has been talking about their intentions to launch an Xbox Mobile Store for years now, but the specifics of the store had been vague for some time. Some assumed that it would only be a store for the mobile games that Microsoft now owns, such as Candy Crush Saga and Minecraft.
So President Bond has finally ruled out any speculation; you will be able to buy the games on Xbox Store from the Xbox App, and play them, on Android.
And we already have some idea of how that will look like. Last year, Samsung unveiled Samsung Game Hub, an application built into Samsung devices that allows Game Pass Ultimate subscribers to stream their games. That started with Samsung’s TVs, but it is now also available on their mobile devices.
Samsung’s application also allows cloud gaming from other services, like Nvidia GeForce Now and Antstream Arcade. But it’s easy to see that Microsoft’s implementation for this will be very similar. In fact, it may resemble simply using an Xbox console.
But what’s really interesting about this is that President Bond announced it days after the verdict was reached. That hints that Xbox had this functionality ready in their Xbox App this whole time. They were simply waiting for when the case would turn in Epic’s favor, and as Epic themselves intended, it would benefit everyone.
The potential to be industry breaking could not be clearer. If Microsoft was even more prepared for this than we thought, they may already have Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 ready to play on the Android Xbox App, to play on phones, tablets, and Android TV boxes, as soon as they launch the store and streaming directly on the app.
And this could change the way Microsoft makes console games as well. They may have to design all the games made by Microsoft studios, or even published by Microsoft, so that they can all be playable on the cloud, with accommodations for different mobile setups.
We already knew Microsoft Gaming was set to have their biggest year to date thanks to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. But Xbox Store on Android is the kind of mindboggling industry changer that could upend the business overnight.
