In a surprise reveal, Microsoft said Thursday it plans to launch a mobile gaming store later this year.
The news came out during an on-stage interview with Xbox president Sarah Bond at a Bloomberg event.
According to Bond, the as-yet-unnamed store will launch in July on web browsers, rather than a designated app, with Microsoft’s recently-acquired Candy Crush Saga serving as a day-one tentpole franchise.
Microsoft’s entry into the mobile gaming market — the most lucrative arm of the games industry — has been anticipated, particularly since the company’s recent $69 billion acquisition of California-based mega-developer Activision Blizzard King.
In November, Xbox head Phil Spencer that the company was “talking to other partners” to potentially launch a mobile store.
The move sets the stage for a new competition between Microsoft and both Google and Apple, since most mobile games are sold and downloaded through their respective app stores.
Bond told Bloomberg that the new Microsoft mobile store “goes truly across devices – where who you are, your library, your identity, your rewards travel with you versus being locked to a single ecosystem.”
GeekWire reached out to Microsoft for further comment, and we’ll update this post if we hear back. Update, May 10: Microsoft shared this statement:
“We continue to focus on creating great content and finding ways to bring more value to developers. This year we will debut our first mobile offering where mobile players can find deals on their favorite in-game items and discover new games, starting on the web so players can access it anywhere. This web-based store is the first step in our journey to building a trusted app store with its roots in gaming.”
Xbox President Sarah Bond
With the Activision deal, Microsoft is now the owner of the Candy Crush series, one of the largest and most consistent moneymakers in mobile gaming. In September, Candy Crush developer King celebrated the latest installment Candy Crush Saga breaking $20 billion in revenue.
While it gets a fraction of the press coverage, the global mobile gaming market makes nearly as much money as the PC and console sectors put together. A recent report from Newzoo lists mobile gaming as making up $90.5 billion of the games industry’s revenue worldwide.
This is largely driven by emerging markets, where it might be rare for an average consumer to have a computer or gaming system, but most of them have a smartphone. As a result, some mobile games can boast a player population in the tens of millions, such as Tencent’s Honor of Kings.
Bond’s reveal comes two days after Microsoft announced a controversial decision to shutter several of the studios that operated under its subsidiary Bethesda Softworks, including Japan-based Tango Gameworks (Hi-Fi Rush). Reported reasons for the shutdowns included a reallocation of internal resources, as well as executives being reportedly unable to effectively manage the number of projects that were underway under Xbox Game Studios’ roof.
Microsoft’s new store also follows up on changes Apple was forced to make to its app-store policies in the wake of its highly publicized legal battle with Epic Games, which sued Apple in 2020 over the revenue-sharing policies in its app store. That suit ended in 2021 with a partial victory for both companies, which found that Apple’s “walled garden” policy was considered anti-competitive conduct.
