A few days ago, Xbox President Sarah Bond revealed in a public speech that the Xbox mobile store will be launched in July. Microsoft's first-party games such as Candy Crush Saga and Minecraft will appear on the Xbox mobile store, bringing Xbox mobile games to users. He also said that the Xbox mobile store will initially appear as a web version, and will be available on major systems in the future.
Microsoft has always had a deep obsession with the mobile market. In 2019, Bill Gates also said at an event that missing out on the mobile operating system was his biggest mistake. Microsoft's WP system was beaten by iOS and Android, and Microsoft lost the big cake of the smartphone market.
However, in recent years, Microsoft has gradually found its own position, trying to cut into content and services to find a foothold in the mobile market. Now, the plan to launch the Xbox mobile store is undoubtedly a manifestation of Microsoft's further penetration into the mobile space.
The Xbox mobile store is launched, and Microsoft once again challenges Apple and Google
In recent years, Apple's closed-ecosystem strategy on iOS has faced serious challenges. The biggest blow to Apple's App Store system is undoubtedly the introduction of the European Union's Digital Markets Act, which forced Apple to allow third-party app marketplaces in the EU, allowing users to install apps around Apple's taxes. This also gives new opportunities for gaming platforms, and shortly after the bill was announced, Apple's old rival Epic said it would launch its own app store on iOS.
At the same time, although Apple has only opened third-party app stores in the European Union, it has also had to change its App Store review policy due to regulatory pressure in other regions. For example, the App Store is finally allowing game emulators to be released, and users can finally play older games from manufacturers like Nintendo through apps like Delta. App vendors can also guide users to bypass Apple's in-app purchase system and use third-party payment methods with lower commissions to buy in-app purchases.
(Source: Lei Technology)
This is, of course, good news for Microsoft. Earlier this year, Apple released the license for cloud gaming apps to be listed on the App Store. Subsequently, Microsoft brought the Xbox Cloud Gaming service to iPhone and iPad users. In the European Union, Microsoft can also move the Xbox mobile store to the iOS platform, allowing users to bypass the App Store and directly download and install Microsoft's mobile games.
Of course, Apple has imposed strict restrictions on third-party iOS app stores, and no region outside the EU can enjoy this benefit. So, the Xbox mobile store that Microsoft launched at the beginning was a web version. In Microsoft's own words, the web version can be used on all types of devices, including iOS and Android, as well as devices such as PCs.
However, there are a lot of restrictions when it comes to launching a web store on iOS. After all, iPhones can't directly install apk local files like Android. As a result, the Xbox mobile store can only be deployed in the cloud, and most iOS users can only play Microsoft mobile games in the form of mini programs or cloud games. This is certainly a solution, but the experience is not always as good as that of a locally installed mobile game.
Of course, no matter what, you can still feel Microsoft's determination to promote mobile games. What's more, Android phones account for half of the mobile market, and the Xbox mobile store can be put on the shelves on Android machines. What Microsoft has lost to Apple and Google in the mobile operating system race in the past is now trying to get it back in another way.
Microsoft's efforts in the mobile game market, where is the confidence?
Frankly, in the last decade, very few of the many projects that Microsoft has tried outside of its main business, especially in the consumer sector, have been successful. The Surface series, which is used to benchmark Apple's Mac and iPad product lines, has a mixed reputation, and the more critical volume is pitifully small and cannot have an impact in the corresponding market. And Cortana, which focuses on intelligent assistants, once caught fire, but was quickly axed. Microsoft also added an Android subsystem to Windows 11 that would allow PCs to run Android apps directly, but the project was axed earlier this year.
Because Microsoft's reputation for the "machete department" is so loud that as soon as the news of the Xbox mobile store came out, many people's first reaction was when it would be abandoned. But one thing to say, games are already one of the few consumer businesses that Microsoft is doing well. Anyway, Xbox is one of the three console manufacturers alongside Sony and Nintendo, and the Xbox console and Xbox games have a lot of fans.
Moreover, in recent years, Microsoft's Xbox gaming project has broken the tradition of the console industry and stepped out of a new way of putting content and services first. Specifically, Microsoft is pushing for a subscription system for games and expanding them from Xbox to PC, where players can pay a subscription fee to play all the games in their library on the XBox console or PC. In this way, the focus of Xbox's business is no longer on consoles, but on game content and services, which is the same idea that Office pushes for subscriptions to continue to make money.
According to court documents accidentally leaked in the previous FTC lawsuit, Xbox games made a profit of $1.5 billion in nine months of fiscal 2022, surpassing Sony PlayStation and with higher profit margins.
(Source: X Platform)
But the console and PC markets certainly won't satisfy Microsoft, which is eyeing the much larger mobile gaming market. In the entire gaming industry, mobile games are definitely a big piece of the pie. According to the report released by Gamma Data, the market size of mobile games in 2023 will be 606.27 billion yuan, and leading manufacturers such as Tencent and miHoYo have made a lot of money.
Microsoft has long had ambitions for mobile games, and when it acquired Blizzard Activision, the person in charge of Xbox bluntly said that it was to enter the mobile game market. Earlier, Blizzard Activision acquired King, a major mobile game manufacturer, who launched phenomenal games such as Candy Crush Saga. Xbox still has a large number of first-party studios, many of which are working on mobile games. Moreover, Microsoft has also reached cooperation with some brands in the field of mobile games, including Tencent.
In this way, players may not have to worry too much about the game content of the Xbox mobile store. However, in Xiao Lei's view, the head effect of the mobile game market is also very serious, and a few head developers have grabbed a lot of revenue and profits. Moreover, these big manufacturers often perform very strongly, such as bypassing Apple's in-app purchases on the iOS platform, and simply not listing the app store on the Android platform.
Therefore, what the Xbox mobile store can do is likely to let its own first-party games compete in the mobile game market as the main force, and then use the profit sharing mechanism to attract small and medium-sized developers to settle in. Of course, Microsoft's cross-platform subscription service, XGP, which covers consoles, PCs, and mobile phones, gives it an edge over the competition.
In general, the launch of the Xbox mobile store can help Microsoft take a share of the mobile game market, but the emergence of Microsoft will not fundamentally change the pattern of the entire mobile game market.
Under the wave of intelligence, the game ecology will also be "Internet of Everything"?
In the game industry, we are always used to distinguishing between consoles, PCs, handhelds, mobile games, and other genres. For a long time, games on different device types were distinct from each other, and the player base had its own characteristics. Even, in the player group, a chain of contempt will be formed, for example, console players will have an inexplicable sense of superiority when facing mobile game users.
But with the rapid development of hardware and technology, the gaming industry is also changing. On the host side, the subscription system, which can bring more stable and continuous income to manufacturers, has gradually become popular, and physical card and disk media have been slowly marginalized. When content and services become the focus of more attention of game manufacturers, the importance of the hardware itself is decreasing. As we mentioned earlier, Microsoft is fully embracing the subscription system, covering the XGP service to PCs and mobile phones outside of the Xbox console, and promoting cloud gaming services, a device with a screen that can be connected to the Internet can become a Microsoft gaming device.
(Source: Microsoft)
Sony's strategy is not so aggressive, but it is also gradually promoting subscriptions, and the long-standing PS exclusivity policy is becoming more and more loose, and a large number of first-party games have been landing on PC platforms in recent years. Relatively speaking, Nintendo is the most conservative, and game sales are still dominated by buyouts. However, Nintendo has also tried many times on the mobile side, and has launched many mobile games to attract new users.
Traditional console and PC game developers are actively launching various mobile game products. Big IPs of terminal games such as Assassin's Creed and Battlefield have all launched mobile game versions of products. In recent years, mobile game manufacturers have also been actively expanding to other devices, such as the currently popular "Genshin Impact", which has already launched PS5, PC and other versions.
In other words, whether it is a console manufacturer or a mobile game developer, as long as they are participants in the game market, as long as they make money through game content, they will inevitably want to cover more platforms and devices with their game products and expand their audience. Moreover, with the further development of technologies such as cloud gaming, there will be more and more cross-platform and cross-device game products, and the line between terminal games and mobile games will become more blurred.
In addition, with the continuous deepening of the wave of intelligence, the popularity of future car machines, AR/VR and other equipment will also provide new carriers for game content. The game ecology will also usher in its own era of "Internet of Everything".
In 2024, the implementation of AI large models will be accelerated, cars will become a golden scene, and "the second half is intelligent" will become the consensus of the industry.
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