In the continuing battle with Sony and the PlayStation 4, Microsoft has concentrated on ensuring its console is a viable option for gamers. However, it is also soon to be the most supported on the market when it comes to apps.

One of those, it has been confirmed, will be VLC, the free video player that crunches through any codec you happen to throw at it. A blog by open source developer Thomas Nigro revealed that he is working on the Xbox One version alongside a dedicated Windows 10 VLC app.

Now that Microsoft is well underway in its universal Windows platform (UWP) plans, the console app should be a simple port.

Last year at Microsoft's Build developers conference, a company representative told Pocket-lint that the switch to a Windows 10-based dashboard for Xbox One would open up the floodgates to "thousands of apps".

However, the console was updated to Windows 10 in November and we didn't get the swarm of applications we expected. Instead, Microsoft and the Xbox team concentrated on making the platform stable.

But now Microsoft is ready to make good its promise. It announced that full Windows 10 apps will be able to run on the Xbox One from this summer during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

The announcement also stated that the Xbox Store and Windows Store for apps and content will be merged into one - something we also reported on last May. This makes sense for easy access to everything from one place. We imagine the Xbox specific apps and games will come under their own tab for continued easy access.

READ: How Xbox One backwards compatibility works: The Xbox 360 games list and more

This announcement meant that Windows 10 app developers have an even more attractive reason to develop apps for the platform. It can now reach more people than ever across its various hardware variants, all after building just one version of the app.

VLC is one of the latest to be confirmed as supporting the console soon, but it's likely social media, messaging, music, video and streaming apps will be big on the console. If other apps like Microsoft Word make it is not clear. But this, with the option to use a wireless keyboard and mouse, could effectively turn the console into a PC.

We expect more to be revealed at E3 in June.

READ: E3 2016: All the launches, games and consoles to expect