Microsoft has plans to be a major player in the mobile gaming space, with a company executive revealing that its mobile gaming app store could arrive as early as 2024.
Phil Spencer, Microsoft's Head of Gaming, recently said the company wants to launch the Xbox mobile store by next year:
We want to be in a position to offer Xbox and content from both us and our third-party partners across any screen where somebody would want to play," Spencer adds. "Today, we can't do that on mobile devices, but we want to build towards a world that we think will be coming where those devices are opened up.
The Digital Markets Act, new European Union legislation which is expected to arrive in 2024, will require mobile tech giants Google and Apple to allow third-party app stores on their platforms. The Google Play Store and Apple App Store are the online mobile app stores currently available on the Android and iOS mobile operating systems.
The new legislation gives other tech players access to the massive user bases of these two mobile operating systems.