Xbox Play Anywhere Program was announced at E3 2016 and Microsoft has since released three games under its new policy – Forza Horizon 3, ReCore, Gears of War 4.
Also See: Microsoft Goes Into Detail on Xbox Play Anywhere Program
All of them are first party games and many other first party games are under development. However, third-party developers are still not entirely onboard with the idea. But that will change once the developers see the potential of this service.
Phil Spencer stated the following:
I’d say some of the bigger traditional third party publishers, they want to see how this works out for us. There’s always a fear that you’re ‘giving away two games for the price of one’. I’ll say I think there are very few people that actually buy a game twice, once on PC, once on console.
Really what you’re doing is you’re just allowing the customer you already have to play your game more often. In today’s world, engagement on games is more engagement on games, [and] is almost always a good thing, given multiplayer and the business models around those games.
I think the third party big publisher adoption will happen in time.
Current Xbox Play Anywhere lineup is:
- Gears of War 4 – Oct. 11, 2016
- Forza Horizon 3 – Sept. 27, 2016
- ReCore – Sept. 16, 2016
- Sea of Thieves – Sometime in 2017
- Halo Wars 2 – Feb. 21, 2017
- Scalebound – Sometime in 2017
- Killer Instinct Season 3 – Available Now
- State of Decay 2 – Sometime in 2017
- Ark: Survival Evolved – Now on Xbox Game Preview
- Cuphead – Sometime in 2016
- We Happy Few – Jul. 26, 2016 on Xbox Game Preview
- Crackdown 3 – Sometime in 2017
Microsoft will add more games to the program in the future that you’ll be able to cross buy.
Source: PC authority
