As Microsoft continues to push the Xbox platform across multiple devices and user endpoints, over 1,000 games now support Xbox Play Anywhere. The company shared the news on Thursday, with Microsoft’s vice president of next generation Jason Ronald talking about the program on the Official Xbox Podcast.
“When we first launched in 2015, it was one of the first steps that we took to really recognize that people are playing across multiple devices,” Ronald says, adding that many modern players want their library of games wherever they go.
Xbox Play Anywhere gives players two copies of a game with their purchase, allowing them to play the game on their Xbox console or a Windows PC through the Xbox PC app.
Ronald adds that games with Xbox Play Anywhere support have 20% higher playtime on average, owing to the flexibility that the feature grants players.
Xbox Play Anywhere remains a primarily first-party feature
Xbox Play Anywhere first rolled out publicly in 2016 with a few Xbox first-party games, including Forza Horizon 3 and Gears of War 4.
Since then, it’s been a first-party staple, with Xbox teams utilizing the feature in all newly developed games, while also updating a number of games from Bethesda Softworks and Activision Blizzard following Microsoft’s purchase of both publishers.
Xbox Play Anywhere isn’t used by many major third-party publishers unless a game is included in Xbox Game Pass, in which case the feature is often added.
Microsoft is also pushing to allow players to stream their owned games through Xbox Cloud Gaming, with titles like Cult of the Lamb and Subnautica being added to the program in recent months.
The first-party teams at Xbox have recently begun experimenting with pushing Xbox Play Anywhere further.
Obsidian Entertainment’s role-playing game Avowed is also available through Blizzard Entertainment’s Battle.net, and a player who purchases a copy of the game on Xbox (through the console or the PC app) also gets a copy on Battle.net at no extra cost.
This functionality is also planned for the upcoming Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4, which is launching in July.
Xbox has several other games slated to launch in 2025 that will naturally also support Xbox Play Anywhere, including Compulsion Games’ South of Midnight and id Software’s DOOM: The Dark Ages, which are slated to launch in April and May, respectively.
