• The plans were discovered in filings with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority.
• The store would take advantage of Activision Blizzard’s recent investment in more mobile games.
• Microsoft still has not received the green light from regulators over its proposed acquisition.

The proposed purchase of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft was never going to be an easy deal to conclude, especially given the myriad permutations it would mean for the gaming industry. While we thought the bigger play was focused on console gaming and beefing up the offerings of services like Game Pass, it looks like Microsoft is also eyeing a dedicated mobile game store too, provided the deal goes through.

Details of a game store were unearthed by filings (PDF) shared by Microsoft with the UK’s Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA), which is one of several watchdogs weighing up the pros and cons of the deal.

As The Verge reports, the filings indicate that Microsoft plans to create a “next-generation” game store. Here, said store would focus heavily on the mobile games under the Activision Blizzard roster, with Call of Duty Mobile, in particular, being cited.

“The transaction will improve Microsoft’s ability to create a next-generation game store which operates across a range of devices, including mobile as a result of the addition of Activision Blizzard’s content,” the filing points out.

“Building on Activision Blizzard’s existing communities of gamers, Xbox will seek to scale the Xbox Store to mobile, attracting gamers to a new Xbox Mobile Platform. Shifting consumers away from the Google Play Store and App Store on mobile devices will, however, require a major shift in consumer behaviour. Microsoft hopes that by offering well-known and popular content, gamers will be more inclined to try something new,” it adds.

It also looks like this mobile game store will serve as a potential case maker for Microsoft, in convincing regulators that its purchase of Activision Blizzard would in fact generate greater competition in the industry, instead of making the company a juggernaut as many have predicted.

Here it hopes that its mobile game store can wrestle away some control from the likes of Apple and Google, which dominate the mobile marketplace.

Whether it can convince regulators, however, remains to be seen. Hopefully, though, there are more plans in the offing to help the company make its case.

[Image – Photo by Alex Motoc on Unsplash]