written by owen on 2026-Feb-13.

In the constant move by xbox to get its player base comfortable with the "owning nothing" to get everyone off dedicated consoles on to PC master race. Xbox start promoting PlayAnywhere; something that PC gaming has had forever but nonexistent on consoles. PC gaming does have its own advantages and problems. But mostly problems - if you ask me.

The major problem with PC gaming is the constantly changing and varying hardware configuration, video cards, RAM sizes and formats. Many reviewers will not mention this fact because they have a sadistic relationship with PC gaming. They game on PC so they want everyone to game on PC. They will spend tonnes of money to setup up a PC just to play a single game at max settings. After which they will sell and repeat the cycle in a couple months. On the flip side console games will keep the same hardware for 5 to 10 years. The hardware stability gives console game devs room for performance improvements over time. Not so with PC gaming. PC game devs are constantly dealing with hardware fragmentation.

Big pipeline

How this relates to "Play Anywhere"(PA) gimmick I will try to explain. Shifting hardware is tightly coupled to "PC Culture". If you bought a game for Windows or Linux in 2005 there is a good chance that you can play it today on any PC. This is not the same for Consoles. Console games are locked to the generation on which you bought them. This is the price you pay for having dedicated software that "just works". The tight coupling makes everything better. Its a strength through limitations tactic. Its both a blessing and curse.

Play Anywhere(PA) can only exist if everyone is in PC Land. When this happens you can sell everyone a new PC box every month and for the suckers on the old box you simply send them patches until they just give up and buy a new PC box. PA is not an advantage, its a fools errand. There is a reason why the older consoles do not get new software patches every week. The limited hardware reduced the surface area for attacks and exploitation. Once you buy into PA/PC culture you lose stability and you gain a crab hole of hardware and software problems brought on by the competing needs of a constantly changing marketplace. You gain the "churn". You start getting 3 year support and security patches every week.

Its bad enough with "pro" consoles, and now you have handhelds + PC/Console hybrids that all need to be supported. The quick solution is "game profiles" that try to configure your custom PC to match a random game that was sent out into the PC world. Who is making these game profiles?

On the latest console they have performance vs quality modes which should have signaled the dead howl but since game reviewers are compromised they promoted this bastardization. There is no need for a quality vs performance setting - the dev should pick a balance and be done with it. But we cannot have nice things anymore, only pain, lots and lots of pain.

Back to PA; none of your old console games will work in the future because they will recompile then to PC as long as they still have the license. PA marks a line in the sand that says "these games are Play anywhere", forget about the old games. The old stuff be dammed. The trick with digital games is that they can keep the prices of games permanently high, then drop random sales to create FOMO and keep people watching the market places like hungry puppies.

Digital game purchases are like youtube videos that you bookmark - it might be there is 10 years, it might not, it might lose half of its previous content, it might not. No one really knows what might happen to the data you pay for in the cloud. Own Nothing. You rent a license.

What happened to the GTA4 sound track can happen to any licensed content that lives in a market place that is constantly extorting the content producers as well as the people who consume it. The market place needs to constantly sell the new stuff while the old stuff is just an annoyance that is tolerated as padding for new suckers who sign up. When they want to stop paying the owner of content they simply delist it or start charging marketplace rent like a supermarket.

It is true there are options that you get access to 400 games as long as pay $50 dollars a month. But if you dig into it you will see that the service is a buffet that you cannot consume. The games are huge, often 50 gigs or more, while your local storage is small so you can only have 10 or so games installed at any point in time. You could play the games via "cloud" at a sub par resolution and framerate but only if you pay extra for good internet. Either way the service requires you to be always online and paid up. There is no way you come out on top. The only way to win is not to play. The platform has the last laugh.

I have games that I have played for 80 plus hours. Even with a free schedule it would take me 5 months to play such a game exclusively. So the other 400 games mean nothing once I have found a game that I am interested to play. You can only load one at a time. Having access to so much content is really a FOMO tactic to keep you hooked on to service that charges you every month to do nothing but look at advertisements.

Conclusion

PA is really just a move to PC digital gaming where you buy a PC/handheld PC but you use it mostly on your couch while your family watches Netflix on your 65 inch 8k tv. You have all the hardware; but not enough time to play. Your virtual digital game library continues grow. Major sunk cost fallacy you can never escape from. You buy something that you cannot sell or share. You cannot stop paying for gamepass because new games constantly come out, you cannot enjoy the games you have because the launcher/homepage gives you anxiety and FOMO for new stuff. You swirl deeper and deeper into a hell hole of constant updates and patches and DLC that feeds on your focus.

Its not a feature - they are just saying they will not sell you the same game twice - but only for these new games. You are getting another reason to waste money.

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