Microsoft Launching Xbox Mobile Store in July

It was recently revealed that Microsoft plans to launch the long-awaited mobile gaming store in July of this year. This news was dropped by Sarah Bond, the recently promoted Xbox president, during an interview at the Bloomberg Technology Summit. She confirmed that a full-fledged first-party portfolio of Xbox games will be coming to said store, and it’ll be hitting the web first before it’s rolled out ‘across all devices, all countries, no matter what.’

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From what Sarah Bond said, the chief goal of the Xbox mobile gaming store is to offer a truly accessible experience regardless of location or platform.

We’re going to start by bringing our own first-party portfolio to the Xbox mobile store, so you’re going to see games like Candy Crush show up in that experience, games like Minecraft. 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 and independent of the policies of closed ecosystem stores.

Here’s a snippet of Bond walking through this topic with Bloomberg:

While the Xbox mobile gaming store will debut with a first-party lineup, it will expand down the line to include partnered products. It’s a lofty goal, with Bond explaining that Microsoft is trying to transcend simply creating a gaming-based application and instead wants to ensure that ‘your library, your identity, your rewards travel with you.’

This concept has been cooking at Microsoft for more than two years, and it’s exciting to see it finally coming to fruition, but for many gamers, the proof will be in the pudding. We’ll know more ahead of the service’s release in July 2024.

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