The world of mobile gaming needs a savior, a storefront that actually focuses on quality games that actually cater to gamers. With Microsoft’s plans to expand the Xbox Games
Store to mobile devices, there’s finally an opportunity to create a mobile game store we all want. But early indications suggest Xbox will launch the store with simplistic titles like Candy Crush instead, something we certainly don’t need more of. This kind of move highlights the stagnation of a market already flooded with mediocre games designed to squeeze every last penny from players rather than delight with engaging gameplay.
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Details of the upcoming Xbox mobile store
Candy Crush and Minecraft are confirmed
Microsoft’s President of Xbox, Sarah Bond, made the announcement at the Bloomberg Technology Summit on Thursday. She confirmed that the new store would begin as a web store but hinted at a native mobile app coming to Android and iOS, at least in the EU. Bond also confirmed that Microsoft first-party games would be available.
“We’re going to start, actually, by bringing our own first-party portfolio to that,” Bond said during an on-stage interview. “So you’re going to see games like Candy Crush show up in that experience, games like Minecraft.”
Sure, everyone loves Minecraft, but the last thing mobile gaming needs is another way to play heavily monetized titles like Candy Crush. If I wanted to play a mindless game filled with in-app purchases the Play Store has me covered.
The minefield that is mobile gaming
We already have game stores filled with mediocrity
There’s a belief in the gaming community that mobile gamers are “not real gamers.” Much of that sentiment stems from the dismal state of mobile gaming today. App stores are filled with titles promising a lot but are really just profit-extraction apps. It’s a familiar cycle for anyone who has tried gaming on their phone: simplistic gameplay in short bursts, interrupted by aggressive attempts at monetization.
This becomes even more outrageous in children’s games when apps attempt to emotionally frustrate children to trick their parents into paying for exorbitant monthly subscriptions to continue gameplay. There’s little thought given about player satisfaction in the mobile gaming industry, leaving a hige hole in the market. We desperately need a game store filled with amazing, high-quality games for all ages, free of microtransactions and ads.
Rumors were floating around for a few years that Xbox could bring exactly what we need — that it would be the Steam game library of mobile, if you will. Alas, Bond’s confirmation that simple games like Candy Crush were already lined up for release dashed most hopes.
Microsoft’s move feels familiar
Different platforms, but still the same
Bringing Candy Crush to Microsoft’s mobile game store is depressing because it means more of the same. Bond specifically mentioned Candy Crush as one of the first games on the store, setting a precedent while casting doubt any significant shift away from annoying microtransactions and simplistic gameplay will come to fruition.
There’s a golden opportunity for Microsoft to lean into one of its strengths: gaming. Windows is where gamers go. Not Linux, not Mac. Xbox was built around gaming. Microsoft’s aggressive moves in the cloud gaming market over the past couple of years and its enormous acquisitions of triple-A studios show it is invested in the market.
Other stores have also dropped the ball when it comes to quality. Then there is Epic’s recent courtroom victory over Google that does give us a glimmer of hope. While Epic may not have the best reputation, there’s no reason a gaming giant can’t enter the mobile gaming market to save mobile gaming from the grips of Google and Apple. This is why Micosotf’s recent announcement about Candy Crush is so depressing; there is a real opportunity for Microsoft to do something great with its mobile games store.
There are glimmers of hope
Plenty of games could work on mobile, and the hardware is already there
It’s not all doom and gloom. After all, the potential for great mobile gaming exists and has already been proven. The Steam Deck is a real thing and works great, bringing Steam’s immense library to a handheld experience. And with the powerful Snapdragon 8 and Apple A-series bionic chips, our hardware is powerful enough on most smartphones to run resource-intensive titles.
While not all games can be ported easily to mobile since some are simply too resource-heavy to work natively on a mobile device, surely games like Microsoft Flight Sim and Minecraft Dungeons deserve a spot on our phones. Microsoft owns many great properties, and I’d love to see the majority come to mobile without being ruined by greedy monetization.
More of the same
Is Candy Crush really Microsoft’s vision for its mobile game store?
Early signs that Microsoft will launch micro-transaction-heavy games on it new mobile app are disappointing. It’s disconnected from what gamers want and disregards the technical capabilities of modern mobile devices and the frustration gamers have with mobile gaming’s current state. There’s an opportunity here for a hero to rescue us all from the dismal reality of mobile games — a platform offering immersive gameplay free of extortion — but the upcoming Xbox game store doesn’t seem to be it.
