Microsoft in bid to make Xbox Live worldwide cross-platform gaming backend

An event entry at the upcoming Game Developers Conference (GDC), scheduled for the 18th March, has revealed Microsoft’s ambitious plans to make Xbox Live the gaming backend for game developers on many platforms around the world.

Titled “Xbox Live: Growing & Engaging Your Gaming Community Across iOS, Android, Switch, Xbox, and PC”  the talk encourages game developers to examine their new SDK, designed to “connect players between iOS, Android, and Switch in addition to Xbox and any game in the Microsoft Store on Windows PCs“, with Microsoft claiming “Xbox Live is expanding from 400M gaming devices” to “over 2B devices.”

The “XDK” is aimed at “game services engineers looking to save time & expand their customer base by letting Microsoft managed game services handle social, communication, and multiplayer interactions across billions of screens.”

Besides offering assistance with “social, communication, and multiplayer interactions”, Microsoft hints that end users will be able to “watch, buy, play, pause, and continue their games from one device to the next.”

Microsoft says “Combined with PlayFab gaming services, this means less work for game developers and more time to focus on making games fun.”  Playfab is a company which develops backend gaming services which Microsoft purchased last year.

The move is another example of Microsoft working to sell tools to developers, rather than trying to win by making hit games and consoles themselves. It remains to be seen if Microsoft will get any adoption, however, given the general mistrust developers have developed over the last 10 years in Microsoft provided solutions.

Do our readers think Microsoft has any chance to win developers over to their solutions? Let us know below.

Via Neowin.net