Microsoft, which made its presence felt in the mobile world with the Windows Phone operating system and its own Lumia series, stopped developing both the operating system and its phones as its market share decreased. While Microsoft’s presence in the mobile world has been at a very low level since then, big news came today.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer announced that Microsoft will release an app store. Moreover, the app store will be available on both iPhone and Android operating systems, thanks to the Digital Market Law that will come into effect in March 2024 in the European Union.
An app store other than the App Store on iPhones? Yes!
Phil Spencer stated that with the European Union’s Digital Market Law, the company’s mobile application store idea will be successful. The law in question will allow Apple and Google to make their operating systems more open. In this way, companies will even be able to bring their own app stores to iPhones.
Of course, we continue to see this situation on the Android side for years. However, until now, Apple did not allow any application store other than the App Store, or even the applications to offer in-house shopping. Of course, the second part of this sentence ended with the Epic Games case. In fact, it was revealed that Microsoft was working on a mobile game store in the past months.
Why does Microsoft want to open its own mobile app store?
The answer to this question is actually hidden in Microsoft’s past moves. The company has reached an agreement to purchase Ninja Theory, Playground Games, Zenimax Media within Bethesda, and finally Activision Blizzard, and had the opportunity to create a large library on the mobile side.
Microsoft’s application store will also allow all new mobile games to be developed in-house to be downloaded only from its own store and to shop through this store. Thus, the company will not pay commissions to both Google and Apple, and will gain great recognition in the developing mobile game world.
It should also be noted that with the acquisition of Activision, it will own all the games in the Call of Duty: Mobile and Candy Crush series, which are currently some of the most played games in the world. These games also rank high among the games with in-game payment.
With this move, Microsoft will be able to offer mobile games and Microsoft applications to users without commission (probably cheaper than the Play Store and App Store). This will allow the company to make more money and allow users to pay less. So it looks like a profitable deal for both parties.
It can also be expected that this app store will include Microsoft’s games that can be played via the cloud with Xbox Cloud Gaming today. In previous information, it was also claimed that Microsoft is working on a subscription system similar to Game Pass for mobile devices.
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