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Microsoft is launching is own "cross-platform" online mobile game shop to compete with Google's Play Store and Apple's App Store.
The new competitor will launch this July, according to Microsoft, and will only offer Microsoft-owned games to start, like Candy Crush, Farm Heroes, Minecraft's mobile version, Call of Duty: Mobile, and Diablo Immortal. These games won't necessarily be added all at once, though. Shortly after launch, Microsoft's mobile gaming store will then open up to include third-party games.
"It's something we've wanted to do for a long time," Xbox President Sarah Bond said in an interview with Bloomberg Thursday, revealing the news at the outlet's tech conference.
Bond says a big reason Microsoft pushed to acquire Activision Blizzard, which also includes mobile game studio King, was so that Microsoft could push into mobile gaming in a big way.
"There isn't actually a gaming platform in-store experience that is centered around players and goes truly cross-device," Bond said.
"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, you know, close ecosystem stores," Bond continued. After the browser-based launch, Microsoft's mobile gaming shop could launch in other forms in the future.
Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer previously said a mobile gaming store was in the works back in November, calling it "an important part of our strategy."
Asked about Microsoft's recent decision to shutter four of its game studios despite some of them producing award-winning games, Bond said, somewhat vaguely, that Microsoft looks at other metrics when deciding what to do about its subsidiaries.
Microsoft's push toward mobile gaming could be its approach to tackling a stagnating gaming market that's no longer seeing the economic boom of the early pandemic years. Bond says the broader gaming industry is in a "time of transition," and that the industry has been "flat" for at least the past year. The executive also claimed that the amount of money required to produce a AAA-quality game has increased—another sentiment that could be leading Microsoft down the mobile game path.
Despite the climate of mass layoffs, not every studio is struggling, though. Capcom is reportedly raking in more revenue than even before, in large part due to sales of Street Fighter 6 and Dragon's Dogma 2.