Xbox Play Anywhere Announced, Get Both Xbox One and Windows 10 Versions
ReCore is one of the games where players can also get a free Windows 10 version when buying it on Xbox One. (Image by Microsoft)
Xbox players will be able to get two games for the price of one.
Xbox Play Anywhere is the new program that lets players own both versions of Xbox-centric games on console and PC that will also support cross-platform gameplay features, Microsoft announced Monday at its E3 conference.
Buying the game digitally on Xbox One or Windows 10 gets players a free version of the same title on the other platform.
A theme behind this new cross-buy program is “play without boundaries” that Microsoft is taking the Xbox brand this year and into the future, further uniting Xbox One and Windows 10.
Save data and Achievements will also carry over across both platforms, Microsoft announced. Players can move their progress between both versions of a game through Xbox Live.
Xbox Play Anywhere will support cross-platform play, meaning users on both the Xbox One and PC can play certain aspects of multiplayer games together. The first game announced in this program was Gears of War 4 by The Coalition, launching on Oct. 11. Gears of War 4 will have cross-network play for the co-op campaign, co-op multiplayer and the game’s horde mode between console and PC users.
Several other Xbox-exclusive games were announced for Play Anywhere. Killer Instinct Season 3 is one of the current available games in the program. ReCore will join the program when it launches on Sept. 13. The newly announced Forza Horizon 3 will also support Play Anywhere on Sept. 27. Sea of Thieves by Rare will be cross-buy later this year around next February. Games that are Play Anywhere releasing next year include Scalebound from Platinum Games, State of Decay 2 and Crackdown 3. Halo Wars 2 has a confirmed release date on Feb. 27 that players can buy digitally for Play Anywhere.
There will also be indie games part of the program like Cuphead, Everspace, Slime Rancher and The Culling. Xbox Preview games like Ark: Survival Evolved and the upcoming We Happy Few by Compulsion Games will eventually become cross-buy.
The base for this new platform initiative started with Quantum Break earlier this year but that was just for a limited time for those that pre-ordered the game.
Cross-network and platform play started with Rocket League in May. It was also announced during E3 that Minecraft would combine the iOS, Android and Windows 10 community with Xbox players. Xbox Live is also spreading across mobile, virtual reality, Xbox One and PC platforms for a more unified infrastructure.
Watch the new gameplay for Scalebound:
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