Xbox Live’s new tournament tool makes Xbox One more attractive for esports developers

Microsoft wants developers to use Xbox Live to facilitate the growing esports and pro-gamer scenes.

The company announced today that it is incorporating a new tournaments feature geared toward developers into Xbox Live. Xbox product manager Jason Ronald took the stage at the Game Developers Conference today in San Francisco to detail how Microsoft is working to improve its platforms for game makers, and one of the key points is that his team is launching a preview toolkit today that enables studios to implement the new Xbox Live Tournaments Platform directly into Xbox Live. This means a developer can set up a tournament inside their game that will have hooks into the Xbox Live multiplayer network. Newzoo forecasts the esports market to hit $463 million this year, but most of this comes from online PC games. Microsoft’s move here is clearly to expand Xbox beyond Halo and Call of Duty when it comes to esports.