Xbox Play Anywhere continues to have a "AAA" problem — why are most publishers uninterested in supporting Xbox's future?

One of my favorite aspects of the 2026 Xbox platform is also one of its most frustrating.

In an interview late last year, Xbox President Sarah Bond was asked where she hopes to take Xbox in five years, in a discussion that revolved largely around Xbox's "Xbox Play Anywhere" strategy, codenamed Latitude internally.

"When I look at the next five years, winning looks like, that Xbox is a platform that is truly seamless across devices," she explained. "That has a seminal, high powered console experience that people love, but that those people can also take their games with them, on PC, on Cloud, anywhere they want in the world."

Perhaps in five years we'll get to that point, but as of 2026, it feels like we're only really dipping a toe in.

I love my Xbox Ally X. Despite some flaws, it nails the fundamentals. I can boot up the device, and immediately get into a game. It has superb ergonomics for long sessions. Generous battery life, and a solid library of games. I play a lot, though, and I've started to scrape the barrel a bit.

Over the holidays I went ham on Fallout 4, which was updated to include Xbox Play Anywhere. And now I've been doing my third playthrough of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, now it's also become available on Xbox Play Anywhere.

There's over 1,000 games on the Xbox Play Anywhere program, and even more high quality games on Xbox PC. But ... this vision of "Play Anywhere" revolves around me taking my save files where I want to use them, right?

It's unfortunate, then, that when Ubisoft+ Classics arrived as part of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate late last year — none of the games actually support Xbox Play Anywhere. So, I could run Assassin's Creed Valhalla on my Xbox Ally, but I would be locked to that device. No cloud saves for my Xbox Series X, or Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Ubisoft+ Classics were used to justify a monster 50% price hike on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate last year, and they don't even support the central remaining unique selling point of the Xbox ecosystem. In a universe where even Halo itself is going to PlayStation 5, Xbox Play Anywhere remains the best, and maybe only reason to continue investing in the Xbox ecosystem.

It's not the first time I've written about how crucial it is for Xbox to start getting organic support for Xbox Play Anywhere, but this week it felt particularly relevant to mention again.

Today, previews for Resident Evil Requiem went live, and it looks rather incredible. It's a definite day-one buy for me, as a long time fan of the franchise.

Users noted in Xbox Wire's preview of the game, it stated that the game would be coming to Xbox PC (or ... Xbox on PC, as Microsoft calls it). That statement was false, and later retracted. Resident Evil Requiem will not only sidestep Xbox Play Anywhere, but it seems like it'll sidestep Xbox PC all together.

This is particularly frustrating, given that Resident Evil Village, Requiem's predecessor, just launched on Xbox Game Pass with Xbox Play Anywhere support. It feels like Capcom was just teasing users with a taste of support, before pulling the rug.

Capcom has been generally supportive of Xbox Play Anywhere, but almost always only when an Xbox Game Pass integration was involved. In fact, that's a common theme in general — whether it's EA, Ubisoft, or well, practically any AAA developer, an Xbox Game Pass bag is expected in exchange for support.

This suggests that Xbox PC users simply aren't buying games in any serious cadence to make it worth the slight effort it might take to set up an Xbox PC publishing account.

I could understand independent developers struggling to justify the costs and effort involved with bringing games to Xbox Play Anywhere or Xbox PC, but it's harder to excuse the ambivalence of the bigger corporations.

Xbox may have curated an audience on PC that simply refuse to buy games unless they're on Game Pass, by putting Game Pass front and center rather than the organic retail store. Epic Games' store has seem similar issues with monster growth, but low conversions. Users seem to show up for Epic's free games, and little else.

Xbox PC has cornered some powerful support too of course, with games like Fortnite, Roblox, and other major PC entities that straight up aren't even available on Steam. But, when it comes to the $70 retail AAA games, games like Resident Evil Requiem, Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, and many many more — developers are still ambivalent. We have Xbox's first party games of course, but they can't be expected to do all the heavy lifting here.

Resident Evil Requiem skipping Xbox PC, right after launching Resident Evil Village on Xbox Play Anywhere, feels like a particularly stark snub. It's as if Capcom is quite sharply saying "this is only worth it when Game Pass is involved." Given what Xbox President Sarah Bond said in the aforementioned interview, that's not an ideal scenario to be in.

It's particularly true when you consider the next Xbox will be Xbox PC-first, and not Xbox console-first. You'd think developers would want to start building up their libraries on the Xbox PC store today ... unless they don't plan to support the next Xbox all up.

Whether it's discoverability issues, user behavior, the back-end systems being too complex for publishers, or bad economics (developers not wanting to give away two copies of the game on one price?) — either way, Xbox PC can't continue missing out on the biggest AAA games, more needs to be done.

Do you think features like Xbox Play Anywhere should be a bigger priority for Xbox than hitting aggressive profit targets? Let us know in the comments and make sure you take part in our poll below:

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