Windows 10 Apps and Store Coming to Xbox One “This Summer”

Windows 10 Apps and Store Coming to Xbox One "This Summer"
Image courtesy of Business Insider

We’ve long known that Microsoft plans to bring the UWP (Universal Windows Platform) to Xbox One sometime in 2016. But now we have a slightly tighter schedule: This change will happen “this summer,” according to Microsoft, or roughly inline with the Windows 10 “Redstone” milestone.

It’s not clear yet whether UWP support on Xbox One is in fact tied to Windows 10 “Redstone,” and one could successfully argue that it doesn’t matter at all. But the timing is of course interesting and likely not coincidental. (Still unknown is when support for Cortana, another key Windows 10 feature, will happen on Xbox One.)

This isn’t how I prefer to report such things, but news of a summer 2016 timeline for UWP support on Xbox One comes courtesy of Business Insider, which attended a Game Developers Conference session run by Xbox Advanced Technology Group boss Jason Ronald.

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According to the site, Ronald relayed the following information, none of which is available for confirmation on the Microsoft or Xbox web sites:

Schedule. Xbox One will gain the ability to run UWP apps “later this summer.”

Stores are merging. The Xbox Store will be merged into the Windows Store, so that there will be only one store. (I can’t imagine they’ll actually call it Windows Store. I recommend the name Microsoft Store.)

UWP is about choice. While Microsoft is of course promoting the fact that UWP lets developers target multiple device types, Ronald said that there’s no reason a developer can’t use UWP to make a game that’s just for the Xbox One.

And that is literally all that we know about this change. The rest of that article is about related things I’ve already covered.

 

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