Microsoft Will Bring xCloud to iOS Devices Using a Web Application
In recent events, the multi-billion dollar industry Microsoft has announced that it won’t be launching the xCloud game streaming service on the iOS market. Why is that? It’s because Microsoft’s xCloud is a game streaming service and it works exactly like a store and according to App Store guidelines set by Apple, you are prohibited to launch such apps on the Apple Store. But lately, Business Insider & The Verge revealed different news explaining how the company is planning to invest in a web version of the xCloud service which can easily run on the iPhone and iPad devices.
According to Business Insider, Microsoft’s head of games Mr. Phil Spencer conducted an in-house meeting with the employees this Wednesday to discuss what possible measures the organization is planning to take in order to bring the Game Pass to Apple devices. As Spencer states,
“Even though the policies of Apple are stringent, we are still aiming to take xCloud to the Apple Store. xCloud absolutely will end up on iOS.”
He also revealed that this is going to happen somewhere during 2021.
It’s not like the first time Apple has blocked services such as xCloud or Stadia from running on iOS powered devices via its App Store. It does allow certain streaming apps to run on its App Store, for example, it allows olive branch to run its respective services entertaining certain levels of restrictions.
For now, Apple thinks the best course of action for developers is to submit their games as a separate app instead of submitting them compounded in a game streaming service. On the other hand, Microsoft & Google allows a catalog style app which collects and links out to all the individual apps.
Microsoft, later on, criticized Apple for its decision expressing that such restrictions can eventually lead to “bad customer experience.” Initially, the team at Microsoft was convinced that they no longer had any plans to bring xCloud to iOS but apparently Microsoft’s gaming team was still not convinced and they wanted to share the experience with their Apple fans. Hence, they expressed how they are working on an alternative way to deliver the experience to their iOS fans out there.
As The Verge states, xCloud will be available for public use as a web app in the year 2021, using the web app, the users will be able to use the game streaming service easily on any device.
Microsoft took its inspiration from Amazon’s Luna, the ever-growing cloud gaming service which will be publicly available for use via the web. How Amazon achieved it, they worked tirelessly with Safari to launch a PWA version of the game streaming service so people can run it on their respective iPhone and iPad. It allows users to access all the games through the web browser and the official Luna controller.
As far as Google’s take is concerned, they wanted to steer clear from commenting on these changes.
“This remains a bad experience for customers. Gamers want to jump directly into a game from their curated catalog within one app just like they do with movies or songs, and not be forced to download over 100 apps to play individual games from the cloud. We’re committed to putting gamers at the center of everything we do, and providing a great experience is core to that mission.”
As far as Apple’s prohibition measures are concerned, it states the prohibition is in place because Apple cares about the security of its customers and focuses on delivering enhanced user experience.
As a spokesman once mentioned,
“The App Store was created to be a safe and trusted place for customers to discover and download apps, and a great business opportunity for all developers,”
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