Microsoft announces Xbox Live for iOS and Android support
Microsoft's Xbox Live has made its way over to iOS and Android devices at long last.
Just ahead of GDC 2019, Microsoft has dropped a special announcement regarding its Xbox Live service. It looks like the paid online platform will soon be making its way to both iOS and Android in the future.
In a description for an upcoming GDC session, Mirosoft revealed Xbox Live services like friend lists, achievements, gamer score, family settings, and other various security measures will be available for games on players' smartphones. The move is the next step in the company's plan to bring Xbox Live to several additional platforms over the years. It's similar in spec to what Microsoft has done with Minecraft, noted Kareem Choudhry, Microsoft CVP of Gaming Cloud.
"We're uniting those communities together with a consistent, singular experience for all of those gamers," he said.
"We're now making that available to developers with our new mobile SDK for developers, which is available for iOS and Android. With one sign-in, iOS and Android games will have a consistent experience with fan favorite Xbox Live features such as achievements, gamerscore, hero stats, friends lists, club memberships, and even family settings -- no matter what device you're playing on."
The idea is to make these features open to developers as well, which Microsoft is planning on doing in the near future.
"All of those features will be made available to mobile game developers, whether they're looking for the entire experience that we offer in Minecraft, or Solitaire, but also standalone features like achievements or gamerscore. Xbox Trusted Identity Network supports log-in, privacy, online safety, and child accounts. All things around safety, security, and privacy that we hold near and dear."
As far as bringing these things to the Switch, the company is mum on that situation.
"Our goal is to unite the two billion gamers," states Choudhry. "But we don't have any specific announcements as it relates to Switch today." So we don't have any new information as far as Switch and Xbox Live goes, but we do know at the very least the company has thought about it.
In addition to revealing the Xbox Live news, Microsoft also announced its Game Stack system, which brings development tools like Visual Studio, Azure, and Havok into one bundle that developers can choose to use one product or all of them from.
Microsoft certainly has a lot up its sleeve at the moment, and we can't wait to see what they're announcing yet.
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replyBrittany Vincent posted a new article, Microsoft announces Xbox Live for iOS and Android support
