This 'thing' has to exist simply so they can be seen as 'competing' in the space, but its just a money vacuum.
I think theres a lot to talk about RE: the app stores for Google and Apple and their dominance in the app space, but its a conversation that boils down to my belief that the hardware makers and OS makers shouldn't also be the store owners. Play Store and the App store should be spun off. These companies are just far too large for the consumer's good. Competition is being stifled, as is innovation. But MS' approach is to merely say hey, you should let us carve out a space amongst your marketshare, while basically hoping they can either buy out the content makers (app devs), or just buy store exclusivity. The 'hook' MS hopes will be the difference is the Xbox ecosystem itself.
My opinion that is the Xbox eco nowadays merely only boils down to GP, which has made it super easy to drop in and out of said eco. Its not like Steam or Nintendo or PSN, where users are primarily buying software licenses, and its access to said licenses, as well as ease-of-access and community, that is keeping them in the ecosystems. The App stores themselves are also very similar in that regard. A GP subscription gives me full access to the benefits of the Xbox eco, but it also makes it super easy for me to leave, since I have no investment in it.
Microsoft is hoping this mobile 'expansion' will lead to enough market disruption that they can have a stronger mobile foothold, but none of the factors needed for that to be real seem to coming to fruition. In order for this to have a reasonable shot at working, MS would need to make their app store the exclusive home of their entire app line. Everything from Teams to the Office suite of apps, to Xbox apps and others, would need to be exclusively offered via this store front, and this includes the mobile apps from the ABK purchase. I simply don't see them having the appetite to cut off that much revenue or putting it at risk. There are loads of app makers out there who would thrive in the vacuum they'd leave in the Play Store/App Store ecos, and i'm only talking non-gaming here. Sure, if they pulled Minecraft exclusively into this store front, you'd have a ton of users install it purely to access Minecraft, but thats about it. They enter a similar situation as Epic and EGS, where EGS as a platform is simply stood up entirely by Fortnite, while they burn all their cash trying to get it turned into a store front that the userbase simply doesn't care for.
There is nothing Microsoft can do to undo the ramifications of them leaving the mobile space a decade ago, no matter how much they try. They should save themselves the money and move on, and focus on making software folks wanna use instead.
