Continuing the PC gaming journey in 2022 and beyond

We’ve talked a lot about our “player first” approach to gaming over the past few years. In the past, it might have meant different things to different people, especially for those who identify strongly with being a console gamer, a computer gamer, or a mobile gamer. If you’re going to walk around the (virtual) halls of the Xbox today, I think you’ll find that for us, the idea of ”player” has come to mean someone who plays many types of games on many different devices. Computer games are part of this; Gamer first should come for PC as well, and to that end, we’ve made investments across the PC gaming ecosystem to ensure that PC is an essential part of how people play games.

Build desks around games, not hardware

A large part of our role as a platform owner and game publisher is to connect players with games no matter where they play. Over the past 18 months, we’ve released games on PC like Age of Empires II and III DE, Gears Tactics, Wasteland 3, Minecraft Dungeons and Microsoft Flight Simulator, many of which topped Steam charts at launch. We look forward to introducing more PC content, including Age of Empires IV, later this year. Whether it’s new genres for well-established franchises, the next iteration of a classic favorite or the evolution of a PC brand, we make games that PC gamers love to play.

More than PC, including Xbox and mobile. That’s why we’re excited to announce that Halo Infinite will support cross-player and cross-progression when it’s released later this year. Play on PC, play with your friends on Xbox One and Xbox Series X | S. This also means to be electronic scales and various applications.

We’ve worked closely with the PC community to ensure that Halo Infinite delivers a leading PC experience, including much-desired features such as support for ultra-fast and ultra-fast displays, triple keypads, a variety of advanced graphics options and more. We want to make sure that Halo serves the PC community.

We are also using the cloud to make console games accessible on more computers. Although not intended to replace original PC games, Xbox Cloud Gaming allows Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members to play more than 100 console games on a wide variety of PCs, from low-spec and entry-level devices to old-fashioned ones that can’t Handle otherwise games that require more power.

Created for PC gamers

We believe it’s important for gamers to have a choice of where to purchase games and we want to make content more accessible. We know the PC community uses multiple storefronts, which is why we’ve also brought Sea of Thieves, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Age of Empires I, II and III: Definitive Edition, and Forza Horizon 4 to Steam .

There are also millions of people who choose to use their Xbox Game Pass membership to play. We launched Halo: The Master Chief Collection at the end of 2019 on PC as part of Xbox Game Pass for PC; Since then, it has been played by over 10 million players, the vast majority of whom are completely new to the franchise. We’ve encouraged the community’s response, and we continue to bring more games from publishers and developers across the industry to the Xbox Game Pass library for PC. We are only four months away from 2021,We’ve already added 100 titles, including award-winning Bethesda games and all-new PC games, and partnered with Electronic Arts to make EA Play part of Xbox Game Pass for PC and Ultimate Memberships at no additional cost. Over 50 leading hardware partners, including Acer, ASUS, Lenovo, MSI, and Razer, offer Xbox Game Pass for PC with eligible devices, giving gamers around the world access to the library.

We are regularly working on features and functionality that improve and/or allow for a more personalized experience like the Xbox Game Bar. We’re also introducing further quality of life improvements for PC gamers, including improved install reliability and faster download speeds over the next few months. We look forward to sharing more details on that soon.

Helping developers deliver exceptional experiences

Game developers are at the heart of delivering great games to our players, and we want them to succeed on our platforms. That’s why today we’re announcing the updated Microsoft Store Terms for PC game developers. As part of our commitment to empowering every PC game innovator to achieve more, starting August 1, developers’ share of net PC game sales revenue in the Microsoft Store will increase to 88%, from 70%. Clear revenue sharing, without restrictions, means that developers can bring more games to more players and achieve greater commercial success than doing so. You can read more about this new revenue share and our work with developers from CVP, and Head of Game Maker Experience and Ecosystem Sarah Bond.