Microsoft Offered to Bring Top Xbox Games to iPhone and Apple Said No

• Apple’s App Store doesn’t allow video game streaming services like Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass.
• Microsoft offered to bring major first-party games, like “Halo,” to the iPhone for access, court documents show.
• Apple refused the offer, Microsoft said, and Game Pass only works through the iPhone’s web browser.

Last year, as Microsoft was gearing up to turn its wildly popular Xbox Game Pass service into the world’s first “Netflix for gaming” service, it was privately negotiating with Apple to get the service onto iPhones.

That’s according to emails between Microsoft corporate vice president of business development Lori Wright and several Apple staffers unearthed by The Verge from legal documents related to Apple’s lawsuit with “Fortnite” maker Epic Games. 

Even though Microsoft offered to bring major Xbox games to Apple’s App Store, Apple apparently wouldn’t budge and refused to allow the service onto the App Store in any form.

“Our proposal for bringing games through individual apps was designed to comply with App Store policies,” Xbox cloud gaming head Kareem Choudhry told The Verge. “It was denied by Apple based on our request that there be a single

streaming

tech app to support the individual game apps.”

On the contrary, Apple said in a statement: “Unfortunately, Microsoft proposed a version of [Game Pass] that was not compliant with our App Store Review Guidelines, specifically the requirement to use in-app purchase to unlock additional features or functionality within an app.” 

In-app purchases, or IAPs, have been a major sticking point for Apple’s App Store rules.