Has Microsoft just significantly rolled back its cross-play plans?

Microsoft has significantly reduced its Xbox Play Anywhere plans if a change to one of its blog posts is to be believed.

The change concerns the upcoming games that will support the service, which allows users to buy a game once on either Xbox One or PC and then own it on both platforms.

Where the original text in the blog post read that the service would be supported by "every new title published from Microsoft Studios", the blog post now says "every new title published from Microsoft Studios that we showed onstage at E3 this year" [emphasis added].

A quiet U-turn

The original wording suggested that the service would be supported by default by first-party titles, which includes games such as the Halo series.

However the subtle change, which has not been announced by Microsoft, implies that the feature is something that a smaller number of games will specifically support, leading to fears that the functionality will not be as widespread as Microsoft originally lead us to believe.

There has been no change to the list of original games that will support the service, which includes ReCore and Forza Horizon 3.

We have contacted Microsoft to ask for comment and will update this article when it responds.

Xbox Play Anywhere will be available from September 13.

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July 07, 2016 at 04:28PM
Jon Porter