We're less than a week away from Avowed's full release, which is on February 18, 2025, and as part of the lead-up to this, Blizzard has released a small bit of news about Obsidian Entertainment's upcoming game: players will be able to switch between Avowed on their PC and their Xbox.
"Avowed breaks down barriers with cross-buy" is the bold claim made in the title of a new Blizzard blog post: "It's nice to have options. With Avowed, we're introducing 'cross-buy' to Battle.net, a feature that opens up more ways to play games in more places with a single purchase. When you buy any edition of Avowed on either Battle.net or Xbox, you can then play the game on both platforms by linking your Xbox and Battle.net accounts."
Being able to play a game that you have paid for on different platforms may not sound very groundbreaking, but surprisingly, it's not all that common for videogames. In games like Overwatch 2, players have been able to merge different accounts for various consoles, but you have to choose one as the main account and then stick to that. And while other games like the Call of Duty series are available to play on Battle.net, Avowed is the first game outside of Activision Blizzard that is available to play on the launcher since Microsoft acquired the publisher.
But while this news is good for those people who happen to own an Xbox and a PC, some players don't think it's as groundbreaking as Microsoft would lead us to believe. "Give my Steam copy an option to be played on Xbox, then we can talk about broken barriers," one player says. Someone else points out that this is a relatively simple step for Microsoft: "PlayStation, Nintendo, and Steam don't have storefronts on the other platforms. MS can do this because they're sticking to the storefronts they own. It's not cross-buy to Steam. Likewise, the other platforms would potentially lose a cut if they allowed it to be eligible for their platforms too."
Back in 2016, Microsoft introduced the Play Anywhere program just as it started to focus on PC gaming again. This lets players buy a game once and then play it on a PC or console; save files, DLC, and achievements all carried over. While this did provide more options, it also had a catch for PC players: Instead of getting to buy a game via Steam, those who wished to take advantage of the Play Anywhere program had to use the dreaded Microsoft Store, whose infamous UWP framework caused a ton of problems.
The only saving grace now is that instead of being roped into just using the Microsoft Store, players now also have the option to use their Battle.net, which is easier and nicer to navigate. Otherwise, this cross-buy feature for Avowed isn't really that new, and it doesn't seem to break down any significant barriers.
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