Xbox looks like it’s finally cashing in on its King acquisition

With its Activision Blizzard acquisition, Microsoft got access to some highly successful franchises, like Diablo and Call of Duty. It also got more casual, mobile titles, like those from the Candy Crush franchise, thanks to Activision Blizzard subsidiary King. The hope was that it could expand into mobile gaming — and it looks like players might see the fruits of that labor soon.

Microsoft confirmed to The Verge on Friday that testing has begun on a “browser-based mobile store.” It looks like it’ll soon be available to Xbox Insiders, according to a post on X (formerly Twitter) from Xbox enthusiast account Klorbrille. The post links to a site that has “mobilestore” in the URL and a “Coming Soon” banner.

Xbox president Sarah Bond revealed during the Bloomberg Technology Summit in May that the company was planning on launching a mobile store in July. “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,” Bond said, with third-party titles to follow.

Bond added: “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.”

Sarah Bond, @Microsoft’s Xbox president, announced at #BloombergTech that the company will launch its own mobile game store in July, creating an alternative to Apple and Google’s app stores pic.twitter.com/hj6eLtsGfl

— Bloomberg Live (@BloombergLive) May 9, 2024

This is the same strategy Xbox used with Cloud Gaming, which was available in a browser so that it could be used across devices — even those from Apple, which had strict rules about what apps could be listed on its App Store (those are slowly changing, but not without resistance).

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella affirmed the company’s investment in mobile and other platforms during an earnings call earlier this week:

“When I think about the Activision portfolio, it comes with great assets for us to cover both the PC and the console, and then, of course, assets to cover mobile sockets, which we have never had,” Nadella said. “We feel that now, we have both the content and the ability to access all the traditional high-scale platforms where people play games, which is the console, PC, and mobile.” Nadella said.

This report coincides with another report published on Friday. This one comes from Windows Central, with sources claiming that Microsoft and Activision have formed a team within Blizzard, mostly made up of King employees, that’ll focus on midsized games within established universes. AAA development — think Starfield — is becoming increasingly expensive and games are taking longer to make, and this would be a way for Microsoft to counter that, but still put out multiple releases every year.

Writer Jez Corden also notes that this could’ve been a place where the recently-shuttered Tango Gameworks (Hi-Fi Rush) would’ve fit in.