Microsoft looking to bring Xbox Live access to Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android, other mobile platforms

If you’re looking for Xbox Live goodness on your Nintendo Switch and mobile platforms, it’s en route.

A Game Developers Conference session description entitled “Xbox Live: Growing & Engaging Your Gaming Community Across iOS, Android, Switch, Xbox, and PC” and is led by members of the Xbox team. It promises a first look at a new “cross-platform XDK” that will “enable game developers to connect players between iOS, Android, and Switch in addition to Xbox and any game in the Microsoft Store on Windows PCs.”

This, in turn, could expand the potential audience for Xbox Live from 400 million gaming devices to over 2 billion devices, by Microsoft’s count. The Xbox Live service currently has 68 million active players, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft has slowly opened its platform, and in 2016, the company officially opened up the Xbox One to allow for gameplay with players on other platforms, eventually pressuring Sony to reluctantly do the same.

The SDK being described for the conference session seems to go a step further, allowing Nintendo Switch and mobile gamers access all the “social, communication, and multiplayer interaction” features of Xbox Live.

Microsoft’s apparent Xbox Live move follows a similar announcement from Epic Games, which in December said it would begin sharing the cross-platform online services used in Fortnite with developers free of charge. Now that cross-platform gameplay and services are all but expected in the gaming world, the gold rush is on to be the company that controls the social and networking infrastructure behind those games.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

Via Ars Technica