Hands up if you’re an Xbox gamer? Yep, me too. For those of us in the Game On AUS community that have the Xbox One, most will be subscribed to Xbox Game Pass which is Xbox’s answer to Netflix-style subscription service for gaming. It’s definitely worth subscribing as for just $10.95/month you can have access to freely download and play over 100 great Xbox titles onto your console. Not only that, those like myself that also own a Windows PC can play some of the Xbox Play Anywhere titles. This means, for games that are Play Anywhere enabled, for the one purchase price you can play the game on both PC and Xbox. Most recently this has meant we can play State of Decay 2 and Forza Horizon 4 on both the Xbox and PC, and transition between the two seamlessly. This is brilliant, though at present there are currently only 15 games out of the 100+ that can be played on the PC as per below.
In a recent communication from Microsoft regarding it’s 2018/19 1st quarter earnings, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, has expanded on their future gaming plans. Acknowledging the success of the Xbox Game Pass, it was announced the Xbox Game Pass would be expanded to include more PC titles. At present the games above are Microsoft-published releases with most available to play on the day they were released. If we enjoy the game enough then we would look to purchase it, as not all games are guaranteed to stay on Xbox Game Pass forever, and in doing so we are offered a 20% discount for being a subscriber.
This is great news for PC/Xbox users, though it comes with a hope that Microsoft look to vastly improve the Microsoft Store usability for gamers. When State of Decay 2 came out, I and others struggled in that first week to be able to connect to other gamers. Not only that, those with less than desirable internet speeds had, and still continue to experience difficulties simply downloading and installing their games. With the recent release of Forza Horizon 4, one of our community members Detryx downloaded the game over several days, only for it to stall during set up, and was forced to spend more days re-downloading it all over again. If Microsoft is going to start putting more emphasis on Xbox Play Anywhere titles being available for PC users, the hope is that appropriate support for the Microsoft Store app puts gamers at the forefront of future planning.
I’m excited about this news, especially with Microsoft titles coming soon such as Halo Infinite, Gears 5 and Crackdown 3 and it’d be great to play them on PC as well as my Xbox. Time will tell and we’ll keep you updated as 2019 steadily approaches.
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