Xbox Is Reportedly Working On A 'Cross-Platform Interface' Called Project Rainway

Following on from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's recent comments about the future of Xbox, outlet Windows Central has dug into the Xbox owner's plans - subsequently revealing a new cross-platform initiative apparently going on at the Redmond company.

According to the site, in particular reporter Jez Corden, Microsoft is working on some sort of "cross-platform Xbox guide" to use across multiple gaming systems. Sources tell the outlet that this initiative is called 'Project Rainway', and that Xbox HQ has been inspired by Blizzard's Battle.net platform in spinning this up.

"Sources tell us that Microsoft is also working on a set of in-game APIs and user interface features, called Project Rainway, which is some form of cross-platform Xbox guide menu.

Microsoft has been inspired by the in-game Battle.net social features seen in Hearthstone, Diablo IV, and World of Warcraft, which lets you share and communicate cross-platform.

This means that for games running on other platforms from Xbox, they will still have an Xbox flavor and in-game Xbox systems, maybe even cloud saves."

What those "other platforms" would be remains to be seen, but it's probably safe to assume that any PC-like device or handheld system of that ilk could make use of this - if it comes to fruition. Whether something like this could ever work on PlayStation and Nintendo systems is up in the air, but it's definitely less likely to be targeting those rival console platforms at this stage.

All of this is just reported information at the moment so that's worth bearing in mind, but it does follow on rather fittingly from Nadella's latest comments - and from Microsoft's 'This is an Xbox' campaign, of course. It looks like we've got an interesting few years ahead of us, folks.