Xbox Play Anywhere is the best, and often most frustrating feature Xbox has right now. And Resident Evil Village continues the trend today!
Resident Evil Village is a landmark horror title from Capcom, and joins Resident Evil 7 in reviving the classic franchise.
Requiem will tie into Resident Evil Village as part of the franchise's wider saga, which sees various bioterrorist cells, pharmaceutical conglomerates, and even shadowy cults vie for control of manmade plagues, viruses, and mutant parasites. Resident Evil 7 and Village tell the tale of Ethan Winters, which is a more intimate story of, who is essentially, a regular dude caught up in the global bioterror struggle franchise fans have come to love.
Resident Evil 7 was strangely among the first early high-profile AAA third-party games to support Xbox PC and Xbox Play Anywhere. Since then, Capcom has been fairly inconsistent with its support of the Microsoft Store and Xbox PC. For Xbox Play Anywhere, we got Exoprimal, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 7, and Kuntisu-gami, but we didn't get Street Fighter, Resident Evil 4, or until now, Resident Evil Village. Oddly, we got Resident Evil 3 as a separate game, without cross-saves or cross-buy.
I'm not entirely sure why Capcom has been so inconsistent at supporting Xbox Play Anywhere. Some of it will be publishing clauses leveraged by PlayStation as part of marketing tie-ins, but part of me wonders if it's due to confusion about how Xbox PC works on the publisher end.
Resident Evil Village wasn't initially announced for Xbox Play Anywhere, leading to some confusion about how it would arrive in Xbox Game Pass. I asked around, and was told that indeed it is supposed to be getting Xbox Play Anywhere, and indeed, today, it picked up the official Xbox Play Anywhere tag — but there's a problem.
The installation file for Resident Evil Village on Xbox PC and devices like the Xbox Ally isn't available. Clicking "Install" simply downloads the 10 MB container, with no actual game inside. Weirdly, it'll even sync your save files from Xbox Series X|S, despite the fact it can't launch the game. It'll just give you a "This game has crashed" message when trying to launch it on a Windows PC or devices like the Xbox Ally.
I suppose this could be a result of the game's unique circumstances. It's already available on Xbox Series X|S, and obviously, they need to prep the game and get it ready for its imminent Xbox PC Game Pass drop — but in doing so, they've left the Xbox PC version inoperable.
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It's a niche issue that highlights how nascent Xbox's PC store operation still is in some regards. Just yesterday, I wrote about how a nasty save bug for Death Stranding on Xbox PC was finally fixed after two years of pain for buyers.
Microsoft has worked incredibly hard to convince publishers and indie devs alike to consider launching on the Xbox PC store, but it has a massive mountain to climb versus Steam, which seems to have truly cornered the "variety gamer" core market on Windows. Microsoft has, however, likely cornered the subscription-preferring market on PC. Additionally, owing to games like League of Legends, Call of Duty, Fortnite, Roblox, and World of Warcraft, it's increasingly becoming an all-in-one destination for major service games that aren't yet available on Steam, too.
Given the issues plaguing Windows and "Microslop" in general right now, the work being done on Xbox PC is one of the company's brightest spots right now. But it's still early days, clearly in some regards. The updates and fixes are coming thick and fast, though, and I suspect we'll see even more adoption for Xbox PC from both publishers and gamers alike in the coming year.
The Xbox Ally has become a primary gaming device for me, so it's great to see games like Resident Evil Village arrive retroactively, even if there are occasional temporary hiccups like this. I suspect the PC app package will go live when it officially hits Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Cloud Gaming on January 20, 2026.
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