Submitted by Jon Reed on
Last November, Microsoft released its XBox One companion app, SmartGlass, in the App Store, allowing XBox One owners to navigate their consoles via their iPhones or iPads to track achievements, message friends, watch game clips and more. Now, according to The Verge, Microsoft is planning a big, cross-platform push to bring XBox Live functionality to both iOS and Android games.
A description within a recent Microsoft job listing (that has since been removed) serves as evidence of the software giant's plan: "We will create a modern framework that is open-source, lightweight, extensible and scalable across various platforms including Windows Store, Windows Phone, iOS, and Android." The listing
continues, "Your contribution will have direct impact on how we win back our game developers from our competitors.” Microsoft speaks of winning back developers because many of them were displeased with the fact that the company not only requires developers to be certified, but they must grant them permission as well, in order to integrate XBox Live functionality with their apps. Rather than jumping through Microsoft's hoops, many decided to develop elsewhere. Microsoft plans on making this process a lot easier by reducing restrictions and adding better development tools, in effort to bring developers back. Perhaps they will unveil some of these new tools at their upcoming Builder conference in San Francisco.
At its Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple said that approximately 240 million people were gaming via Game Center as of last June, while Microsoft claims XBox Live is "48 million people and growing." That 240 million looks like a huge, untapped market of potential customers to them.