Findings by The Verge have now revealed a failed partnership between Microsoft and Apple that could have bought a lot of Microsoft’s AAA Xbox Exclusives to iOS devices. Although Apple has been really finicky and hostile towards other companies when it came to partnerships, Microsoft was willing to work with them to bring their cloud gaming catalog to the App Store.
Microsoft had plans to bring their AAA Xbox Exclusives to iOS
Emails from February of 2020 between Lori Wright (Xbox’s head of business development) and Apple executives show where Microsoft and Apple had their differences while going over their plans. Microsoft wanted to bring their games in one big package like Netflix while Apple wanted each game to be an individual application with the whole streaming stack.
Microsoft didn’t want to go with this as they would have to maintain multiple apps (even hundreds as they were willing to bring a lot of games to iOS) although they proposed to adjust and Apple refused, which eventually led to the deal not working out at all due to Microsoft’s plans not agreeing with Apple’s App Store policies (especially the 30% cut that Apple takes from what the IAPs bring in).
Had the deal worked out, iOS users would be able to head over to the App Store and buy games like Forza Horizon 4 or Halo Infinite.
These games would still run with the help of Microsoft’s Cloud Servers that would stream the game to devices instead of local hardware. Players wouldn’t have to get the whole Game Pass subscription to try out these games. Microsoft eventually went with a workaround to bring xCloud to iOS devices through web browsers.
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