Chess.com App for Xbox/Playstation

After fiddling with the fugly crapshow that is "Fritz - Don't Call Me a Chessbot", and getting bored with the beautiful visuals but lack of functionality of Chess Ultra, I found myself really wishing Chess.com was available as an app on the Xbox.

First off, I just like playing Chess on a big screen in my living room from my sofa. It makes me feel like I'm living in the 21st Century. I prefer it to hunching over a laptop or sitting in front of a PC of an evening. Joking aside, as a dev the last thing I want to do after work is sit in front of a laptop or PC.

So I started using Chess.com via the Edge browser on Xbox, and that's great, but there are some usability headaches. Certain elements of the UI that work great on a website aren't so hot on Xbox with a controller, but still, it sort of does the job.

I don't know what platform the Chess.com website is coded in, but the devs have done a great job of it. It looks good (far better than Fritz), is nicely laid out and is very usable. Designwise everything harmonises nicely, it's got everything I want in it, and it just "feels good".

So was figuring for consoles maybe a React Native port, or even a trimmed down version of the site running in a UWP app via an Edge view control would be cool, maybe handle logins via MS single-sign on and/or Sony's equivalent. It'd take a fair bit of work, as such things are rarely "lift and shift", but the core experience is there.

Thing is, there are no decent chess games for consoles, certainly nothing that has a decent selection of AI games, Matchmaking, puzzles and lessons.

Chess Ultra is probably the best, but limited to 6 save games and no way of exporting/importing. It's pretty chill to play, but in terms of features it's very basic. As for Fritz, well, try it... Let me know what you think.

So I definitely reckon there's a bit of a gap in the market, unsure how big a gap it is, but a gap nonetheless, for a Chess.com app on consoles. What do you folks think?

As far as I'm aware, there are no plans for anything like that