Xbox Mobile Game Store Launches on Android & iOS in July

Microsoft has officially announced that it will be launching its Xbox mobile game store on Android and iOS this coming July and it will also be bringing Candy Crush, Minecraft, and more titles to the app as well.

As a part of the Bloomberg Technology Summit on Friday, Microsoft’s President of Xbox, Sara Bond, confirmed that its mobile game store is launching in July.

Microsoft has been talking about its plans for an alternative game store to Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store for a while now, but this revelation is the first time that we can actually confirm that the product is coming very soon.

Aside from this, Bond also confirmed that the Xbox game store for mobile devices won’t be launching as a native app. It will work as a portal for the web app which will allow Microsoft to distribute Windows Store products to a wider audience.

With all that said, it is still unclear as to how these games will be distributed via the web. iOS now also supports sideloading apps because of an EU mandate and it seems like cloud gaming might have a role to play in Microsoft’s plan for the future.

It seems like Microsoft’s end goal with this launch is to compete with Apple and Google’s native storefronts and offer complete third-party support but that is still a ways off as Microsoft has yet to make an OS that can compete with iOS or Android.