When it comes to gaming, Microsoft has really only dominated the living room with Xbox. Part of its success has been thanks to Xbox Live – the first online gaming service for consoles that got it. Now it wants to bring that same kind of experience to more mobile platforms.
The Verge reports that Microsoft is working to bring Xbox Live to mobile platforms other than Windows Phone. In other words, you may soon be able to play against your friends, earn achievements and more all from your iOS or Android device via Xbox Live.
Normally, this kind of information usually comes from sources close to development, but Microsoft pretty much confirmed that they’re working on Xbox Live for iOS and Android in a recent job posting:
“New Devices and Gaming” is looking for passionate and experienced developers to join us. Your contribution will have direct impact on how we win back our game developers from our competitors. As a member of the newly formed team, you will have the rare opportunity to influence our planning and design from the beginning. We will create a modern framework that is open source, light-weight, extensible and scalable across various platforms including Windows Store, Windows Phone, iOS and Android. Working on the gaming technologies, you will collaborate with both internal partner teams across the company and external ecosystem partners to enable end-to-end gaming scenarios.
Perhaps the most interesting about this job posting is that Microsoft is working on an open source solution. The company has gone out of its way to be more open source friendly in the last few years, but seeing them build a platform to be open source from the start is pretty surprising.
By making its mobile Xbox Live extension open source, Microsoft may very well “win back [their] game developers from [their] competitors.” There are already multiple platforms that enable online play for mobile games, but Xbox Live would be super enticing for developers also creating console games. I can see developers building an Xbox One title that would be able to communicate with a mobile companion app via Xbox Live for further interoperability between the two. Even non-console developers would probably love to integrate Xbox Live into their games due to it being a recognized brand among gamers – hardcore and casual.
Despite the job posting making this seem like a done deal, it may not come to fruition. Microsoft could change its mind at any time. Still, a move into online mobile gaming only makes sense if Microsoft wants to better compete with Google and Apple whom both have similar services.
Image via windowsphoneuk