Xbox 'mobile store experience' coming in July, but it'll be web-based

Xbox's new mobile storefront will start on the web and "extend from there," Xbox president Sarah Bond says.

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Xbox's Universal Store is starting to take shape. Microsoft plans to lay the early frameworks for its new unified digital commerce ecosystem with a so-called 'mobile store experience.' Xbox already has a game store on consoles and PC, but the mobile version won't be a dedicated shop.

Instead of a native app, Microsoft is launching its Xbox mobile store on the web. This way, Microsoft can completely circumvent paying the 30% commission fee on the Google Play and App Store. The Xbox mobile store experience is set to launch sometime in July--the same month that Microsoft will shut down the Xbox 360 store.

Here's what Xbox president Sarah Bond said about the mobile store in a recent interview with Bloomberg:

"The whole thesis of the Activision acquisition, a big reason why we did that was about mobile.

"We felt strongly that there was an opportunity for an experience on mobile that is centered around gamers.

"But there actually isn't a gaming platform or store experience that is centered around players, and goes truly across devices, where who you are, your library, your identity, your rewards travels with you versus being locked to a single ecosystem.

"We've recognized that opportunity for a long time but we wanted to make sure that anything we built was really grounded in people who play those mobile-native games, and the creators of them.

"And so joining with a team that has real expertise in mobile was important to us. But we are that now.

"So in July, we are going to be launching our mobile store experience.

"We're going to start by bringing our own first-party portfolio to that. So you're going to see games like Candy Crush show up in that experience, games like Minecraft, and then we're going to extend that capability to partners so that they can also take advantage of it and have a true cross-platform, gaming-centric mobile experience.

"We're going to start on the web, and we're doing that because that really allows us to have an experience that's accessible across all devices, all countries, no matter what, independent of the policies of the closed-ecosystem stores.

"And then we're going to extend from there."