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Microsoft prepares mobile games.

Microsoft

Microsoft is pre­par­ing to launch an app store for games on iPhones and Android smart­phones as soon as next year if its $75bn acquis­i­tion of Act­i­v­i­sion Bliz­zard is cleared by reg­u­lat­ors, accord­ing to the head of its Xbox busi­ness. «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,» said Phil Spen­cer, chief exec­ut­ive of Microsoft Gam­ing, in an inter­view ahead of this week’s annual Game Developers Con­fer­ence in San Fran­cisco, which starts today. Microsoft is fight­ing with reg­u­lat­ors in the US, Europe and UK, which have all raised con­cerns about the poten­tial impact on com­pet­i­tion from the owner of the Xbox con­sole buy­ing the developer of Call of Duty, one of the world’s most pop­u­lar games fran­chises. While acknow­ledging it was hard to pre­dict exactly when Microsoft will be able to launch its own store, Spen­cer said it would be «pretty trivial» for Microsoft to adapt its Xbox and Game Pass apps to sell games and sub­scrip­tions on mobile devices.

Microsoft’s cur­rent lack of mobile games was an «obvi­ous hole in our cap­ab­il­ity» that it needed Act­i­v­i­sion Bliz­zard to fill, he added. Microsoft has argued that Apple’s App Store rules restrict its abil­ity to offer cloud gam­ing through a single app that runs nat­ively on the iPhone, for­cing users to access the ser­vice via a web browser, with lower per­form­ance.

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  1. Simon20 March 2023 at 11:13

    The Activision deal will probably go through although we don't know when that will be. Will it be in 2023 or next year? I'm hoping that a change in leadership comes with it at Activision because the scandals they were involved in showed that there is no leadership there.

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  2. Angus20 March 2023 at 11:41

    Sony tried to stop the Blizzard deal saying that Microsoft will become too powerful and can choose to not allow Call of Duty on PlayStation. It's not out of the question that this can happen. It might not happen in 2-3 years but after that, it's anyone's guess.

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  3. Quentin20 March 2023 at 13:54

    Spencer shouldn't have used those words "pretty trivial" because they add extra pressure to the people that actually have to make this work. Just say it's probably going to get done quickly. And I don't think the deal will go down this year. Most likely in 2024.

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