Update [10 March 2021]: Achievements are making their triumphant return to the Xbox app. Here’s the full story.
Original story: The new Xbox mobile app made its way to iOS yesterday, following in the footsteps of a previous release on Android. While we’re largely enamoured with it, we can’t deny its missing two huge features: Achievements and the ability to buy a game or redeem a code in the Microsoft Store.
In our Xbox Series X preview, we called the app “an all-in-one tool for all things Xbox, providing access to your Friends, Parties and Messaging alongside the ability to install (and remove) games from your attached Xbox consoles.” It also adds neat features like remote play and the ability to install a game to your Xbox before you’ve even purchased it — but upon reflection, this change might have been made to help Microsoft bypass any notion of purchasing a game in Apple’s extremely restrictive ecosystem more than anything else.
While I might have to shed a tear over the loss of an ability to buy a game or redeem a code for a game or Xbox gift card (and there’s a URL that you can use for the latter on your smartphone to do that anyway, right here), I’m happy to hear that Microsoft is already at work on the reintroduction of Achievements to the app.
“We love Achievements too and look forward to bringing them to this app in the future,” Principal Program Manager of Xbox, Harrison Hoffman wrote on Twitter to a player with the same love for Achievement functionality. “Can’t share much beyond that yet.”
You can grab the new Xbox app on iOS here and Android here if you’ve not done that as yet. We’ve reached out to Microsoft for comment on Store functionality.
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