Microsoft won’t bring its PC and Xbox games to Android after all

Color us disappointed. The recent report from Reuters that said Microsoft is interested in bringing some of its PC and Xbox games to mobile platforms was apparently a case of getting lost in translation.

On Monday, a report from Reuters quoting the Japanese Nikkei agency sent waves of excitement throughout the tech world, especially because the beloved Age of Empires strategy franchise was singled out as coming to Android and iOS devices by the end of the year.

As it turns out, an Age of Empires game is indeed coming to mobile devices, but don’t expect it to look anything like the seminal strategy title. Instead, the Japanese company KLab licensed the name of the franchise from Microsoft and will publish a game based on it in the near future. Licensing old intellectual property to third party developers is common practice these days, and Microsoft is probably doing just that.

Somewhere between Nikkei and Reuters, the bit about other PC and Xbox titles heading to mobile platforms was added, and the story ballooned soon after that.

Does that mean that we won’t ever see a game published by Microsoft on mobile devices? We can’t rule out the possibility, with phones and tablets becoming ever more powerful and new technologies like game streaming promising to change how we play video games. It just won’t happen this year.