Satya Nadella reportedly made the confirmation in response to questions at the Madrid dotNet Conference, at which thousands of developers were in attendance.
The Xbox One was updated with the capabilities to run universal Windows 10 apps last year with the New Xbox One Experience (NXOE). In addition to the new Avatars app, which appears to be a Universal Windows Application, the NXOE briefly offered a glimpse of Cortana running on Xbox One — showing that Windows 10 convergence is truly on the cards.
According to Microsoft Insider, Satya fell short of answering where UWAs would appear on the Xbox One, leaving us to wonder whether the Xbox One will simply receive the full Windows 10 Store, or receive more strict curation processes as is currently the case. Either way, the report should be encouraging to independent Windows app developers, who have so far been unable to put their apps onto the Xbox One.
Beyond some fan favorite third-party Windows 10 apps like Readit, Baconit, Tweetium, and (ahem) Windows Central — it opens up the possibility of accessing Office Mobile, and other light computing apps via your console. Xbox head Phil Spencer recently re-confirmed that Microsoft is working on bringing mouse support to the Xbox One, which would further the usability of UWAs like Word and Excel although Edge for Xbox One functions fairly well while using your Xbox controller joystick as a cursor.
Full Windows app support for the Xbox One creates all sorts of possibilities for the console and gives it another powerful differentiator in its battle with Sony's PlayStation 4.
Source: Microsoft Insider
