The Xbox Mobile App will allow you to buy and play games directly from later this year

• The Xbox Mobile app will soon let you buy and play games through it
• It's not clear how this will relate to the Microsoft Mobile Game store that's been proposed
• But it seems this is all down to recent changes forced on Google

The Xbox Mobile App will soon let you buy and play games directly through it, it has been announced. Microsoft gaming top boss Sarah Bond, who serves as Xbox president, made the reveal on Twitter and confirmed that these offerings were made possible thanks to changes in Google's storefront made earlier this week.

For lack of a better term, this means that players will soon be able to enjoy even more offerings from Xbox. Although as other outlets have noted it's not exactly clear how it will differ or coexist with the recently-announced and highly-anticipated Microsoft Mobile store.

It's definitely a question to be asked, as the Microsoft Games store was proposed way back before the recent changes to Google's own storefront. You'll remember that these changes will only last a grand total of three years, down from an originally proposed six. So it could be that Microsoft is looking to take advantage of these changes quickly while planning something bigger down the line.

Bringing a storefront to mobile is a bit more difficult than you might expect. Or, well, exactly as you might expect. But despite the opportunities presented Microsoft seems to still be lagging behind. Part of this could be attributed to some really nasty rounds of layoffs that have hit the company recently, which seem to have stymied a proposed July release date for their game store.

Still, it's good to see it's at least somewhat in progress.

Looking for other great games to play? Then why not check out some of the titles on our list of the best mobile games of 2024 (so far)?

And if that's somehow not enough you can also dig into the latest entry in our regular feature of the top five new mobile games to try this week!