Microsoft to unify PC and Xbox One platforms

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Microsoft is planning to unify its PC and Xbox One gaming platforms into one ecosystem running Universal Windows Applications (UWAs), the head of the company’s Xbox division Phil Spencer has announced. It also looks likely that the Xbox One will become more PC-like with backwards compatible hardware upgrades in the future.

During a press event in San Francisco last week, Spencer said that the Universal Windows Platform, a common development platform that allows apps to run across PC, Xbox, tablets and smartphones, would be central to the company’s gaming strategy. “That is our focus going forward,” he told reporters. “Building out a complete gaming ecosystem for Universal Windows Applications.”

This is, he explained, the culmination of the company’s vision over the past year. In January 2015, Microsoft announced that it was bringing an Xbox app to Windows 10 PCs, allowing cross-platform play and a cohesive friends list across both platforms. Then, in November, the Xbox One was updated to be compatible with Windows 10, bringing a new interface and features to the console. In late-January, Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella told attendees at the dotNet conference in Madrid that UWAs would be coming to Xbox One, but did not specify in what capacity.

Now it seems Microsoft’s plan is to shift the entire development model towards universal applications that run across PC and console – indeed any machine that’s compatible with the Universal Windows Platform. This could have radical implications for the console model, which so far has always been based on the idea that the hardware has to remain largely unchanged throughout the machine’s lifespan.

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What this could mean is that the Xbox One becomes more like a PC, with Microsoft releasing updated versions at regular intervals with more powerful processors and graphics hardware. In theory, because games will be written as UWAs, older titles will remain compatible with the new machines.

“We believe we will see more hardware innovation in the console space than we’ve ever seen,” said Spencer. “We’ll see us come out with new hardware capability during a generation and allow the same games to run backwards and forward compatible because we have UWAs running on top of UWP. It allows us to focus on hardware innovation without invalidating the games that run on that platform.

“We can effectively feel a little bit more like what we see on PC where I can still go back and run my old Quake and Doom games, but then I can also see the best 4K games coming out. Hardware innovation continues and software takes advantage. I don’t have to jump generation and lose everything I played before.”

Spencer went on to claim that uniting the Windows 10 PC and Xbox One ecosystems has meant that there are now more Xbox games in development than there have ever been before. He also stated that the games division within Microsoft is working to provide experiences like cross-platform play between different devices, as well as giving publishers the ability to sell a game on one platform that will then be available to consumers on other Windows 10 devices. In other words: purchase, say, Tomb Raider on PC, and that will also get you the Xbox One version.

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Update: we asked Microsoft whether UWAs would be a closed platform, with only licensed developers able to develop for games. A spokesperson told us: “Any developer can create UWP games using tools available at https://dev.microsoft.com, and load those apps on their computer or send them to others to side-load. To widely distribute UWP apps, developers currently have to register to sell through the Windows Store and follow the store guidelines to make their app available. However, there is no approval process to obtain development tools or develop UWP apps.”

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