The Activision Blizzard and Microsoft soap opera has made it possible to lift the veil on the intentions of each other, but especially on those of Microsoft, which has largely defended itself with the various regulatory bodies. And in the race for the mobile game market, the Xbox teams intend to play a leading role.
Mobile gaming: a new axis of growth for Xbox with Activision Blizzard
By wishing to buy Activision Blizzard and King, Microsoft quickly indicated its desire to target the mobile and PC markets as a priority. Phil Spencer, boss of Xbox, has already expressed his interest several times in these sectors whose potential is greater than the console markets.
When we thought about what we are capable of today and what we need to do, the biggest gaming platform on the planet is the mobile phone. One and a half billion people play on mobile phones.
(…) we really started discussions, at least internally, with Activision Blizzard about the capabilities they had on mobile and then on PC with Blizzard. Those are the two things that really piqued our interest.
These comments from the summer of 2022 are still valid today and it was in a document published by the British antitrust authority that we discovered, last October, Microsoft’s desire to build an Xbox game store designed in particular for mobile.
The new Xbox platform could arrive in 2024
It is near the Financial Times that Phil Spencer clarified today the ambitions of Xbox around mobile gaming.
It is thus confirmed that Microsoft is preparing to launch a new game application store for iPhones and Android phones as early as next year if its acquisition of Activision Blizzard is approved by regulators.
Phil Spencer discusses new rules requiring Apple and Google to open their mobile platforms to app stores owned and operated by other companies under a European law called Digital Markets Act (DMA). This one is a regulation which wishes to prevent the “abuse of a dominant position by the digital giants, which are in particular the GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft), and to offer greater choice to European consumers”.
It is by forcing Apple and Google to open up that this law will allow Microsoft to distribute its Xbox games even more.
“We want to be able to bring Xbox and content from our third-party partners to all the screens where someone wants to play.
Today we can’t do that on mobile devices, but we want to build a world that we believe will open up to those devices.
The Xbox boss says the Activision Blizzard King takeover will help spur competition in what he calls the “biggest gaming platform” – smartphones – where Apple and Google currently wield what some antitrust authorities have called a “duopoly” on the distribution of games and other applications.
According to the timeline proposed by Europe, the rules of the Digital Markets Act, the rules established must apply from May 2023 and the application of these obligations must be done by March 2024. In the case of Apple and Google, it will, among other things, allow the installation of other application stores on iOS and Android devices. It is therefore from March 2024 that Microsoft will be able to release its Xbox store and make it accessible on iOS and Android.
