At its Windows 10 event today, Microsoft outlined new interactivity between its current console, Xbox One, and the next version of its Windows operating system. Players will be able to play some games, like Fable Legends, across both platforms and they'll be able to stream games from their Xbox One to a Windows 10 PC or tablet.
Some of Microsoft's other plans for cross-platform and cross-buy — meaning that owners of Xbox and Windows platforms can buy a game on one platform and access it on multiple platforms — sound like they're still in flux. And some of those decisions simply aren't up to Microsoft.
"We're the platform. We will enable what publishers want to do with their content," Xbox head Phil Spencer said in an interview today when asked about cross-buy support for games that span Xbox and PC. "I'm not giving anybody's content away to somebody else. That's not our role. But how you end up with the game on both platforms is going to be dependent on who's selling the game.
"We're going to let the publishers decide the business model that they have on their titles."
Microsoft's chief console rival Sony has enabled cross-buy and cross-platform play across its devices, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and Vita, making it possible to buy a game on one platform and play it on others. Sony recently announced support for cross-platform play between PS4 and PC for Capcom's upcoming fighting game, Street Fighter 5.
Spencer said Microsoft is still figuring out what it plans to do for first-party games, like Fable Legends and future games that span Windows and Xbox platforms.
"We're going to have to work through the scenarios and the games," he said, saying that some games benefit economically and gameplay-wise from having a much larger install base. "I think it's going to be a little game-by-game."
Spencer said that unlike Games for Windows Live, in Windows 10 developers get full access to Xbox Live and "everything that an Xbox One developer has.