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Aliens: Fireteam Elite was a solid 3-player co-op shooter, similar in vein to the likes of Left 4 Dead. It was also a pretty big win for Xbox PC and Xbox Play Anywhere a little while after it launched, joining the platform alongside its Xbox Series X|S version with cross-play and cross-buy capabilities. Sadly, Daybreak Game Company doesn't seem to think it was worthwhile.
Confirmed to us last week, Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 will not only skip Xbox Play Anywhere, but it's skipping Xbox PC all up.
"Organic" adoption of the Xbox PC store has been fairly miserable. It's a huge problem for Microsoft's future plans for the ecosystem, and it's one that new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has identified in recent memos to staff internally.
"We have to be honest about where we are. We’ve got work to do. Players are frustrated with us, they feel like we haven’t updated our console enough, they feel like our PC presence isn’t very strong," Asha recently said to Xbox staffers, noting that she plans for Xbox to "sweat every detail."
A big gulf remains between what players expect of the Xbox PC storefront experience and what today's experience is actually like. I'm told that a big update is coming for Xbox PC later this year that should help. And Asha Sharma has also recently hired some platform discovery and search experts to boost the usability of the Xbox PC store on that side, too. Sharma's appointment of David Schloss in particular is potentially compelling on this side. He was instrumental in growing Instacart into a huge operation, and I'm told he's also a big PC gamer as well who understands the expectations therein.
Therein lies one of the problems: increasingly it looks like developers are only willing to join the Xbox PC store with some form of upfront marketing deal, as opposed to organically.
But the dev side also seems to be a bit of a mess, judging from conversations I've had with developers over the years. Sharma has also brought in engineering expertise from Microsoft's GitHub and tooling teams to help in this area as well.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite didn't show up on Xbox PC and Xbox Play Anywhere on day one, but it did adopt the platform post-launch as part of an Xbox Game Pass deal. The same is true for other titles, as well. Resident Evil 2, 3, and 7 are on Xbox PC and Xbox Play Anywhere, although Resident Evil 2 and 3 at least seem to be abandonware with updates several years behind that of their Steam counterparts. Resident Evil 8 only arrived recently as part of Xbox Game Pass. Resident Evil 9, as expected, was a total no-show.
Therein lies one of the problems: increasingly, it looks like developers are only willing to join the Xbox PC store with some form of upfront marketing deal, as opposed to organically. It's another Xbox problem for Asha Sharma to solve, as part of a growing list.
Steam doesn't have to ask any dev to come to its platform. It's the de facto default store for variety core gaming, and that doesn't look set to change any time soon — even if younger cohorts armed with Roblox continue to eat into the traditional user bases. Microsoft is gunning for a slice of this PC pie, and it has pretty huge advantages. Xbox PC comes pre-installed on Windows 11. It's giving developers an 88% cut of the revenue, rather than Steam's 70% cut. The initial dev fees have also been removed, too.
I'm told footfall through Xbox PC is higher than that of the Epic Game Store, but Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 will be day one on Epic's platform ... and won't launch at all on Xbox PC, Xbox Play Anywhere or not.
Are developers potentially holding Microsoft hostage for Xbox Game Pass money here? It could be a double-edged sword in essence. Getting a Game Pass deal has helped Microsoft grow the Xbox PC store very rapidly, but on the downside, both users and developers seem to see it as a "Game Pass" store, rather than an organic, traditional PC store. Microsoft has trained its users to wait for Xbox / PC Game Pass drops on the Xbox PC app, and it has trained developers to only show up in exchange for a Game Pass deal. I'm not sure that's sustainable long term.
Xbox PC is key to Microsoft's gaming future
I'm not sure how you solve the problem. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario. Users won't show up if the games aren't there, and devs won't show up if the users aren't there. I suspect users aren't buying many games outright via Xbox PC, and are mostly using it for PC Game Pass and Xbox Play Anywhere. Developers probably don't see the value in giving away "two licenses" of their Xbox games, even if there's little evidence that gamers are willing to buy games twice. On the contrary, Microsoft says Xbox Play Anywhere games see higher sales and engagement, and speaking for myself, I'm far more likely to buy a game if it has the feature.
Given the memory price and supply route right now, Microsoft is missing out on a big opportunity to meet users and developers on platforms where they already are. People are going to be keeping their existing devices, PC, console, and otherwise, far longer than usual. The price of memory is absolutely blowing up, and analysts suggest it won't come down until 2028 at the earliest.
They should've been building the Xbox PC store up decades ago to weather storms like this, but hey, better late than never.
It has improved a ton. The Xbox PC mode makes PC gaming from a TV incredibly convenient, and opens up new opportunities for the best mini PCs from the likes of GEEKOM to act as "video game consoles." But, there's still a ton of small, weird pain points. Absolum on Xbox PC, for example, still doesn't have a play button for some reason. New games don't show up in search for days after launch in many cases. And, the store is missing out on mountains of classic staple PC titles. If you want older games like Dark Souls, Elden Ring, The Witcher 3, and even some of Microsoft's own games — you need to look elsewhere. That's a problem.
But given Windows K2 and the big shakeup at Xbox, it seems Microsoft is now, at least, very much on the case. Better late than never.
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