I'm currently working on a Home Automation project where I have a Raspberry Pi on Windows IoT which communicates with multiple arduinos running on FreeRTOS (I need multi-tasking). 
At the moment the communication is through the serial port using Xbees, the Pi sends a command, and the arduino send's back a string in JSON format.

For cost optimisation reasons, I want to try to switch the Xbees with ESP8266 modules. Is it possible to get the same kind of serial communication over WIFI?Thanks.