I thought Play Anywhere gives you a free copy from the Windows Store?
It is, but it would be more awesome for more people if experiencing its awesomeness didn't so often involve having an unawesome experience with the Windows Store.
FWIW, I haven't had these bad experiences, so it's nothing but awesomeness here.
RancidLunchmeat
Veteran
So you have no actual experience or knowledge and are just living up to your custom title of Uber-Troll? Good to know. One would think that somebody of your reputation would have based your statements that Play Anywhere was feature incomplete or didn't work on something other than the words of an obviously biased poster, but I suppose that isn't the case.
I said it was a baby. In terms of a healthy human baby that every parent is thrilled to have. It has all its fingers and toes and isn't developmentally deformed. I stated that no, the baby cannot run with adult humans but that doesn't come close to your statements that it should be in alpha or beta stage.
Play Anywhere doesn't have the same game library of Steam, so it will not be able to run in that race. But Steam also doesn't have the same feature set as Play Anywhere. I can't play games on my Xbox that I bought on Steam. Case in point - I bought Astroneer TWICE. Once, originally, on Steam because I didn't know it was a Play Anywhere game. Once I learned it was a Play Anywhere game, I bought the game a SECOND time so I could play with my Xbox friends either on my Xbox or on my PC. Steam doesn't offer that service, ability or value.
There's no reason at all for me to buy a game on Steam rather than through the Windows store and get Play Anywhere capability unless there's a huge price difference and even that would need to be weighed against the value of playing the game just against Steam players and being limited to only playing on my PC or playing against everybody on Live and being able to play the game on Xbox or PC or both whenever I want.
Any game that is available on Play Anywhere, I buy that one instead of Steam because I also own an Xbox and sometimes want to play on my 60 inch TV on a couch with a controller rather than on my 34 inch UWHD 1070 PC which is the only way I could play the game if I bought it through Steam.
The fact that DrJay said it "was a hassle" is beyond pale because it's clear he's never used the service himself. As others have mentioned, if you are a PC gamer you have to install Uplay, Steam, Origin, etc.. to play different games. The windows store actually comes already installed on all W10 PC's and those are the only ones we're talking about because those are the only ones capable of Play Anywhere. Play Anywhere is actually less of a hassle than buying and installing Mass Effect or Diablo.
The entire argument is dumb and baseless and nobody who owns both an Xbox and a PC would ever make such a statement and that's evidenced by the fact that neither you nor DrJay own both or have actually tried the system.
I was countering an argument presented based on my interpretation of that argument.
DrJay24 - It's not a great service
You - it may not be but that's because it's a baby service << You're not contesting the view but implying he's right but it's understandable
Me - Being a baby service doesn't excuse it
That doesn't make me a troll. You said it was a baby service, which to me means incomplete and non-functional, apparently confirming DrJay's point that the service doesn't work well. You've explained your point very nicely in the following post which clears up my misunderstanding. And had you led with this point instead of the baby analogy...
I wouldn't have posted.
I'm sure Play Annywhere works, whereas the windowws store content is still lacking I think the main issue is elsewhere: the presentation as well as the way it works does not (imo) blend well into windows environment.
Steam is more than a store or an apps, the program provides multiple functionality and they are intricated. Windows store is an apps store, it sales apps, it makes sense on a console or a mobile device to have such device offers only one environment/workspace.
On PC you have multiple universe, you can have steam open, the browser (a world in itself), productivity programs. etc. Having an app store saling somehow disconnected apps (that can work together) is not a fit appoach for the device.
Now the greater issue is indeed the amount of available content and prices of software.
Steam is more than a store or an apps, the program provides multiple functionality and they are intricated. Windows store is an apps store, it sales apps, it makes sense on a console or a mobile device to have such device offers only one environment/workspace.
On PC you have multiple universe, you can have steam open, the browser (a world in itself), productivity programs. etc. Having an app store saling somehow disconnected apps (that can work together) is not a fit appoach for the device.
Now the greater issue is indeed the amount of available content and prices of software.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
I had my first experience with the Microsoft store a few weeks back when I bought Gears 4.
It wasn't an intuitive experience because my expectation was the game would appear as an icon on the desktop or that it would be launchable from the Store app itself but neither seemed to be the case. If there was an instruction that this game should be run from the Xbox app then I missed it - Gears wasn't appearing in the menu search bar or My Computer.
Eventually I had to google the problem. I guess it's obvious when you think about it, it is a Xbox Play Anywhere title. This is not a complicated issue but it left with a poor impression of buying from Microsoft compared to Valve. But I agree with Shifty, you don't get a break for being new - you're still competing with stores that are older and learned from earlier mistakes.
I first used Steam when it was required for Half-Life 2 and it was a piece of crap. An utter, miserable, piece of crap.
It wasn't an intuitive experience because my expectation was the game would appear as an icon on the desktop or that it would be launchable from the Store app itself but neither seemed to be the case. If there was an instruction that this game should be run from the Xbox app then I missed it - Gears wasn't appearing in the menu search bar or My Computer.
Eventually I had to google the problem. I guess it's obvious when you think about it, it is a Xbox Play Anywhere title. This is not a complicated issue but it left with a poor impression of buying from Microsoft compared to Valve. But I agree with Shifty, you don't get a break for being new - you're still competing with stores that are older and learned from earlier mistakes.
I first used Steam when it was required for Half-Life 2 and it was a piece of crap. An utter, miserable, piece of crap.
Is this just a Gears 4 thing? Forza Horizon 3 (and Apex) both pop up if I hit the Windows key and type Forza. There is a Play button for the title on both of their store pages and yes they also can be launched via the Xbox App (along with any other title which properly registers itself with Windows as a game).
The "put icon on desktop" behavior is pretty much a legacy thing at this point. I am actually annoyed when installers don't give me the option to not do this since I immediately delete the shortcut anyway. Pin to Start, Pin to Taskbar and Jumplists are much better ways to access apps and content for those apps.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
I don't know how prevalent this is for other titles. Gears does now show now show up in the Start menu but didn't even an hour after downloading.
Maybe this is a limitation of the daemon that detects software in Windows 10I can't quite fathom the Windows Xbox app's recognition of other games. For example it seems to ignore most of my Steam library, yet shows Gears 4 (Microsoft store) and Life in Bunker (Steam), Stonehearth (Steam) and State of Decay YOSE (Steam).
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I don't know how prevalent this is for other titles. Gears does now show now show up in the Start menu but didn't even an hour after downloading.
Just downloaded Gears 4, since I didn't have it already and it showed up fine....after it finished downloading. Which is another point in Steam's favor. Steam downloads are FAST. They max out my 100mbit internet connection and might go faster if I cared to upgrade that.
Protip for those like me who didn't know this, Amazon sells redemption codes for Play Anywhere titles and they can be cheaper than buying directly through the Windows/Xbox Store. Got Gears 4 on both Xbox One and PC for $29.99. It's still $59.99 direct from MS!
It's nothing the Xbox App is doing. The developer has to identify that they are a Game to the OS and then Windows shows it in the "Games" area of the OS. The mechanism for doing this has been in Windows for a while now and this functionality was rolled into the Xbox App when Xbox became the focus of all gaming for Microsoft across all it's platforms. Games that show up in the Xbox App are telling Windows they are a game, those that don't aren't.
Edit: Actually, the Games Explorer was apparently first introduced with Vista. Shows how much people have cared about it that developers are still ignoring it. Maybe they'll start paying more attention now.
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On the Xbox One the fastest I've had games download at is around 160 mbit/s (on my 330mbit connection). Since I'm using OpenDNS instead of my ISPs DNS sometimes the CDNs aren't as fast as they should be since the name lookups aren't always resolved to my geographic region, but the XO downloads are usually in the range of 120 - 150 mbit. I didn't time the downloads on my PC but it felt like it was certainly faster there.
I wonder if the DL speed on the console is limited by CPU or drive latency. I'm curious to see if the DLs are faster on the mid-gen upgraded XBOX.
I wonder if the DL speed on the console is limited by CPU or drive latency. I'm curious to see if the DLs are faster on the mid-gen upgraded XBOX.
The store could use work. Honestly, as someone who has been away from Steam for some time too, steam isn't as intuitive as many people make it out to be. Every time I have to use it, I pretty much loathe it.
People are just used to it because that's all they've been using for so long.
It's actually, imo, a pretty crappy client as well.
People are just used to it because that's all they've been using for so long.
It's actually, imo, a pretty crappy client as well.
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