With just under a week remaining until the launch of Avowed on February 18, 2025, Blizzard has shared some exciting news about Obsidian Entertainment’s forthcoming title: players will be able to seamlessly transition between playing Avowed on their PC and Xbox.
The headline of a recent Blizzard blog post boldly states, “Avowed breaks down barriers with cross-buy.” The post emphasises the advantage of having choices, noting that “cross-buy” is being introduced to Battle.net. This feature enhances gaming accessibility by allowing players to purchase any edition of Avowed on either Battle.net or Xbox and then enjoy it across both platforms through linked accounts.
While the concept of accessing a purchased game on multiple platforms may not seem revolutionary, it’s actually quite rare in the gaming industry. For instance, in Overwatch 2, players can combine accounts from different consoles, but they must select one as the primary account. Additionally, although titles from the Call of Duty series are playable on Battle.net, Avowed marks the first game outside of Activision Blizzard to be featured on the launcher since Microsoft’s acquisition of the publisher.
While this development is positive for individuals who own both an Xbox and a PC, some gamers feel it isn’t as revolutionary as Microsoft suggests. One gamer stated, “If I could play my Steam copy on Xbox, then we could discuss breaking down barriers.” Another noted that this move is relatively straightforward for Microsoft: “Unlike PlayStation, Nintendo, and Steam, which don’t have their stores on other platforms, Microsoft is simply utilising its storefronts. It’s not really cross-buying with Steam. Additionally, allowing such compatibility might cause the other platforms to miss out on revenue.”
In 2016, Microsoft launched the Play Anywhere initiative as part of its renewed focus on PC gaming. This program enables players to purchase a game once and access it on either a PC or console, with saved files, downloadable content, and achievements transferring seamlessly. However, there was a downside for PC gamers: those wanting to benefit from the Play Anywhere feature had to buy games through the notoriously problematic Microsoft Store instead of Steam, which is known for its user-friendly experience.
The one positive aspect at this point is that players have the choice to use their Battle.net account for Avowed, providing a more user-friendly experience than being restricted to the Microsoft Store. However, the cross-buy functionality for Avowed isn’t particularly innovative and doesn’t really overcome any major obstacles.
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