Microsoft promises “more at E3” as it announces Xbox Game Pass for PC.
Xbox Game Pass has been a real success story for Microsoft. While Sony’s equivalent – PlayStation Now – tends to favour older games and re-releases, the Xbox Game Pass has curried favour with fans by bringing brand new games to the service, day and date with their retail release.
That means great platform exclusives like Forza Horizon 4 and Sea of Thieves – and less great ones, like State of Decay 2 and Crackdown 3 – have been included in the monthly subscription charge. When you weigh up the cost of the pass, at £7.99 a month, compared to a fifty quid game at retail? It’s a bit of a no-brainer. Upcoming exclusives like Gears 5 and Halo Infinite only help make the case.
But most of these games are Xbox console exclusives. They’re also available to purchase from the Windows Store, but the benefits conferred by the Xbox Game Pass haven’t extended to PC players. Until now.
Well, not now. Soon.
Today, Xbox supremo Phil Spencer announced the PC version of Xbox Game Pass. Of it, he said they will be bringing “a curated library of over 100 high-quality PC games” from “developers and publishers such as Bethesda, Deep Silver, Devolver Digital, Paradox Interactive, SEGA, and more”.
It’s not available just yet, though. Spencer promises to reveal more of the Xbox Game Pass for PC at this year’s Xbox E3 press conference., so don’t expect to see the Xbox Game Pass PC launch until – at the very least – June 9th of this year.
In other Xbox-on-PC news, Spencer also pledged to bring more Microsoft Studios titles to digital storefront Steam, including all of the games from the Age of Empires series, and the aforementioned Gears 5.
They’re also going to allow developers to work with native Win32 applications, rather than trying to force everyone down the Univeral Windows Platform (UWP). That probably won’t mean much to players, but will no doubt be a welcome announcement to developers reading this.
