Gamemakers can start supporting Xbox Live on Switch, Android and iOS

Game developers can start supporting Xbox Live on Nintendo Switch or on Android and iOS. This is evident from a session that Microsoft has planned at the Game Developer Conference next month.

Microsoft already supports Xbox Live on its own games on other platforms, but the “XDK” allows other game developers to build in support, according to the announcement of the session on GDC that Avers found. As a result, Xbox Live can work on more than two billion screens, instead of the four hundred million that the service now supports, Microsoft claims.

This allows players to take their achievements and friend lists from the Xbox or PC to Switch and smartphones, the software maker says. In addition, users can pause a game with the SDK on one platform and continue playing on the next device by syncing the progression.

Microsoft has not yet explained anything about the Xbox Live SDK. The GDC is scheduled from March 18 to 22, and the software maker is likely to announce more about the function there. Making a cross-platform SDK available for Xbox Live indicates that in addition to its own consoles, Microsoft also believes it can generate revenue from services that do not run on its own platforms. This is already happening with other Microsoft software. Office applications, Azure cloud services and browser Edge, among others, run on non-Microsoft platforms.