Xbox’s recent announcement of their Play Anywhere feature for exclusive games across console and Windows 10 has been met with a lot of confusion from fans. From what we can gather, we can assume that Play Anywhere between Xbox and Windows 10 is probably likely to only occur with Microsoft exclusive games such as Sea of Thieves, Gears of War 4, Crackdown 3 et cetera.
Console-wise, Scorpio will be able to play any Xbox One or backward compatible Xbox 360 game through backward compatibility meaning that any third party game you bought on your current-gen console would be playable on Scorpio. For third-party games you buy on Scorpio, however, we have no idea if they’ll be made playable on Xbox One.
Microsoft are focused on making doing just that, though. Any Microsoft exclusive game you buy for any one of the three platforms will be playable at a different level of visual fidelity and performance on the Xbox/Windows 10 family. There is one caveat, however, this Play Anywhere movement is only going to apply for games that are purchased digitally through the Xbox/Windows Store.
While there is no sure confirmation on this, we can look back at Remedy’s Quantum Break, an originally Xbox One exclusive title that launched earlier this year. Purchasing the digital version of Quantum Break allowed players to play the title on a Windows 10 PC as well. Users are allowed to use this cross-buy feature as the license is tied to the Microsoft account they use on both devices meaning Microsoft knows that you own it for both services. Xbox Play Anywhere, cross-buy titles will only apply for digitally purchased goods.
Lewis is a games journalist, freelance gaming and consumer-tech journalist. They contributed 344 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: has since served as Editor-in-Chief at StealthOptional and Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser, with bylines at Gfinity Esports and FRVR.