Last evening, the Xbox Web Store had been updated to show supported platforms for content beneath their title, as opposed to being wedged at the bottom of the screen. A problem with products on the Xbox Store is that the “Play Anywhere” has been seldomly used as of late. And if you aren’t aware of what that tag means, Play Anywhere games are titles that essentially support cross-buy: you buy one version of DRAGON QUEST III Remake on Xbox or PC via the Xbox App slash Microsoft Store, you get that game everywhere else where the title is available.
Games that supported cross-buy used to slap the Play Anywhere tag on the web page as well as the Xbox console’s store app. But lately (months even) publishers have been neglecting to put this tag on their games that do support cross-buy. Whether it’s because they didn’t know about the Play Anywhere programme or if its Microsoft simply lagging behind on marketing it (or caring about it outright) is unknown. But now, for many titles on the webstore, a game’s product page now clearly shows what versions of the game come with the license, making it just a bit easier to know whether a game supports cross-buy or not.
This is very helpful as, despite Microsoft making it clear that “Everything is an Xbox“, the user experience still doesn’t quite reflect that. Hopefully we’re finally starting to see changes to how the Xbox Store operates and hopefully team Xbox gives players more options on how to find these Play Anywhere games to begin with as the Xbox.com web page remains woefully underprepared to do so.
