Microsoft said that a number of Xbox partners have plans to bring Windows 10 Universal Windows apps to the company's gaming console later in 2016. These include NASCAR, Nickelodeon, Hulu and Dailymotion.
At the recently concluded Microsoft Build developers' conference, the company announced how developers and partners are all building on Microsoft's platforms. Steve Guggenheimer, Microsoft corporate VP and chief evangelist, along with John Shewchuk, a technical fellow and the Developer Experience team's chief geek, revealed some of the notable tools and frameworks that are being worked on by developers who are collaborating with Microsoft.
A few weeks prior to the event, Jason Ronald, chief of the Advanced Technology Group for Xbox, hinted at the Gaming Developers Conference (GDC) that Microsoft has plans to open up the Xbox One gaming console to universal apps with summer as the timeline.
While details on the plan had been scarce at the GDC, the latest announcement showed the early app developers who are committed to building universal apps meant for Windows.
Microsoft also announced it is launching free development tools that will help each developer scale their apps more easily for every type of platform, eventually allowing them to increase their customer reach.
"Microsoft is the only cloud vendor that supports the diverse needs of every organization and developer," said Scott Guthrie, Executive VP of the Cloud and Enterprise Group. "With 30 regions worldwide - more than every major cloud provider combined - Azure's massive scale means developers and businesses alike can focus on creating the next generation of amazing applications, not their underlying cloud infrastructure. This makes our cloud the de facto choice for enterprises of today and tomorrow."
When Microsoft launched Windows 10, the company said that one of the new OS's biggest promises was the added support of universal apps. This means that developers will be allowed to make simple tweaks to their apps in order to make them compatible across various Microsoft platforms. When there's an ecosystem of universal apps running on Windows 10 PCs, smartphones and the Xbox console, it will definitely enhance the user's gaming and entertainment experience on using the console.
However, critics on the company's universal apps initiative are saying that what it had actually created is a "walled garden." It remains to be seen whether the same sentiment will be shared by future developer partners or if Microsoft's cloud computing services will indeed become the de facto choice of major enterprises.
