Microsoft promises to keep app stores open to ease consolidation concerns
Brendan Sinclair
Managing Editor
Wednesday 9th February 2022
Microsoft today committed to a series of Open App Store Principles intended in part to calm concerns about the company's growing role and ease regulatory concerns about the pending acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
The company said the policies -- detailed in full below -- apply to the Microsoft Store on Windows and "the next-generation marketplaces we will build for games."
A selection of the policies are also going to be applied to the Xbox ecosystem and storefront, although Microsoft drew a distinction between platforms that "have become essential to our daily work and personal lives" like smartphones and computers and platforms dependent on a closed ecosystem to turn a profit because the hardware is sold at a loss, as with consoles.
Alongside the principles, Microsoft committed to making Call of Duty and other titles from the publisher available on PlayStation even beyond their existing agreements. It further expressed a desire in "taking similar steps to support Nintendo's successful platform."
"Ultimately, we believe that this principled approach will promote a more open app market and better serve our users and creators alike," Microsoft president and vice chair Brad Smith said in announcing the principles. "And, in turn, they will help us build a bigger and better gaming business.
"We know that we'll likely need to continue adapting these types of principles as we move forward. We're dedicated to the constant change a demanding world not only requires but deserves. In our view, this is all part of the future. And we embrace it."
The full list of principles follows below. The first seven will be implemented on Xbox consoles as well as the Microsoft Store for
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