Xbox Play Anywhere Is a "Tremendous Value," Marketing Boss Says

Microsoft's new Xbox Play Anywhere feature, which lets you buy a digital game once on Xbox One and get the Windows 10 PC version free or vice versa, represents a "tremendous value."

That's according to Xbox boss Aaron Greenberg, who told DualShockers that the goal for the program is to open up games to a new audience to grow the profile of each franchise.

"So that is absolutely exciting," Greenberg said. "To be able to do that and to say: You'll be able to play both versions on both platforms without having to pay twice… I think is a tremendous value."

The first Xbox Play Anywhere game is ReCore, the new title from Mega Man designer Keiji Inafune. Other upcoming ones include Forza Horizon 3, Gears of War 4, and Halo Wars 2. Regarding sales, Greenberg said he anticipates Xbox Play Anywhere titles to sell "pretty well on PC."

"I think we will see that a lot of gamers, despite us putting them in already pre-defined buckets, most gamers play on multiple devices. They play on the console and on the PC," he said.

"For me as a gamer, the benefit of, 'Hey, if I'm at home and I wanna start playing Gears, but then I'm at work, at school, on the road, wherever it might be, and I can continue where I left off in my PC,' is a tremendous benefit," Greenberg added. "It gives a lot more value to the games for fans. So we're excited and we'll see. It's something that we'd like to hear people's feedback about, and hopefully they're excited about it and they'll support it, so that we can continue to do it, and other partners will see the opportunity there as well."

Not everyone has been so happy about Microsoft's efforts to bring console games to PC, something that Greenberg has already responded to.

The executive went on to say that part of the reason why Microsoft is launching Xbox Play Anywhere is to catch up with what has been the norm in other forms of entertainment for many years now.

"If I buy digital entertainment content today, movies, music, etcetera, it streams across your devices. So we wanted to enable that for gaming, and that's a consumer benefit," he explained.

Read the full DualShockers interview here.

Microsoft may be going all-in on its console/PC unification strategy, but it appears Sony won't follow suit. PlayStation president Andrew House recently said he's unsure if people would be interested in that.

"Yes, there was a big emphasis from the folks at Microsoft on Xbox and PC cross-play. It remains to be seen whether there is latent large consumer demand for that," the executive explained.

In other news about Xbox and PC, Microsoft has said it might release more games on Steam.