During a panel at the Game Developers Conference, Microsoft made a variety of announcements, including the fact that cross-buy support is officially coming for games and apps on Xbox One and Windows 10 devices.
Cross-buy will work similarly to what we've seen elsewhere, including PlayStation systems: Buying certain Xbox One or PC games will provide you with copies that can be played on both your console and any Windows 10 devices. Pinball FX 2 is the first game to support cross-buy; if you own content for it on Xbox One, you already own the in-development Windows 10 version.
Cross-buy support comes as part of Microsoft's Windows Universal App Platform, which we first heard about in January. Developers will be able to create a single version of a game that can run across all Windows devices (including Xbox One). To show how easy it is, Microsoft said Shovel Knight Yacht Club Games was able to port the game to Xbox One in a single day.
It's currently unclear how commonplace cross-buy will be. The decision will be in the hands of developers, as Spencer says it's "nothing something that we'll mandate." But he made it clear that Microsoft's overarching vision is to make games on the Windows 10 platform available in some way no matter what device you're accessing it from.
Issues with input--a controller-oriented game may not be suited to a Windows 10 phone's touchscreen--will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Cross-buy, to be clear, is separate from the ability to stream Xbox One games to your PC.
Microsoft also demonstrated the previously announced cross-play feature, which allows multiplayer to be played with different players on different platforms. This was shown using IDARB, with one player on Windows 10 and another on Xbox One.
This is huge for PC owners. Obviously not all developers will support you owning "two copies" (so to speak) with one purchase but I think to supporting this is a big move on Microsoft's part. If developers buy into this, then PC gamers would have a console to play their PC games on and vice-versa. To give you an idea of how this could be taken advantage of, if you typically game on your PC but have game parties, you could play your games on PC when you want and then when the party starts you load up the console versions of the games on the XBOne and have at it (not streaming).
The other HUGE part is the cross platform multiplayer. If you primarily game on PC and your buddy has an XBOne, but you want to utilize your PC, then you can still game together!
Man, I really hope this takes off. If it does, and I'm not holding my breath, I will gladly add an XBOne to my collection. GLADLY
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