President of Xbox Sarah Bond announced during yesterday's Bloomberg Tech talk with Dina Bass that the long-awaited Xbox mobile store will debut this July via Web (to avoid the limitations of the App Store and Play Store while regulators around the world enforce new guidelines). The first games to be added to the store will be Microsoft-owned franchises, like Minecraft and Candy Crush, though the store will be opened to partners shortly afterward.
We talk a lot about how there's 3 billion gamers. Two of those play on mobile, and half of those actually play on mobile and they play on another device. But there isn't actually a gaming platform in-store experience that is centered around players and goes truly across devices where who you are, your library, your identity, and your rewards travel with you versus being locked to a single ecosystem. We have recognized that opportunity for a long time, but we wanted to make sure that anything we built was really grounded in people who play those mobile native games and the creators of them.
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Being joined with a team that has real deep expertise in mobile was important to us, but we are that now. In July, we are going to be launching our mobile store experience. We're going to start by bringing our own first-party portfolio to that. You're going to see games like Candy Crush and Minecraft show up, and then we're going to extend that capability to partners so that they can also take advantage of it and have a true cross-platform gaming-centric mobile experience.
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, and then we're going to extend from there.
News of the Xbox mobile store first hit in October 2023, when The Verge's Tom Warren shared Microsoft's plans to launch it sometime this year. In early December, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer confirmed that it was a key component of the overall Xbox strategy; after all, as these executives have often said, the massive acquisition of Activision Blizzard was largely driven by the company's mobile expertise.
During her chat at Bloomberg Tech, Sarah Bond also touched upon the status of cloud gaming. The executive noted that Xbox is seeing 'tremendous growth' with more demand than supply and, as such, Microsoft will increase its investments in the area and roll out increased capacity and new options to play in the cloud.
We have been investing in that for some time because we
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Xbox has its first chance to regain some good faith since its recent studio shutdowns this week as Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 hits the Series X|S and PC on May 21. From the little gamers have gleaned from the closure of Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks, it feels like the studios' latest projects not moving the needle in terms of money likely played a big part in Xbox's decision. Potentially daunting for the team behind Hellblade 2 since it will launch on Game Pass day one, but there is a way to make sure the game makes money even if you do plan on playing on Game Pass - via buying its merch.
It’s been several months since Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard was finalized, and even though the latter’s catalog of titles has started making its way over to Game Pass with Diablo 4 kicking things off in March, there hasn’t been any real clarity on whether Call of Duty in particular is going to follow suit. Now, however, it’s being reported that concrete details on that front will be officially shared soon.
Microsoft will release the upcoming installment of the Call of Duty franchise to its Xbox Game Pass subscription service at launch this fall, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
Epic Games Publishing and developer AQUIRIS will release Horizon Chase 2 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on May 30, the companies announced.
The has begun rolling out today and its main feature is that it adds keyboard and mouse support with Xbox Cloud Gaming. The bad news is that only 26 games that are available through cloud gaming will have that support for now, and Microsoft didn’t mention whether that list will grow in the future.
Today, Microsoft announced that Xbox Cloud Gaming (available as part of Game Pass Ultimate) has received initial mouse and keyboard support for the following twenty-six games:
Microsoft just released a new update for Xbox Cloud Gaming that finally brings mouse and keyboard support, after teasing the feature for years. The tool is currently in beta release and works with both the Edge and Chrome web browsers. It looks pretty simple to use. Just select a game that supports a mouse and keyboard and have at it.
With the closure of the Xbox 360 digital storefront coming on 29th July 2024, Microsoft has announced one last sale for the company’s most successful console.
Kim Kardashian was already more than a household name in 2013. The Kardashian name (hers, specifically) was equivalent with “celebrity” — or “notoriety,” depending on who was saying it. But there was one more step toward international fame that she wasn’t so sure about: whether she wanted to become a video game character.