Obsidian Entertainment's role-playing game Avowed is launching soon, and it's the first Xbox game supporting a feature that will hopefully be the start of a new trend. While we've known for months that Avowed would be available through Blizzard Entertainment's Battle.net platform, a new preview of the game on Xbox Wire confirms that Avowed will support cross-buy.
This means that Xbox Play Anywhere has been effectively extended, allowing a user to buy Avowed on Xbox Series X|S consoles, Battle.net, or the Xbox PC app, and giving them access to the game through all three platforms. Naturally, players have to link their Xbox and Battle.net accounts to take advantage of this feature.
While Battle.net has been used by Blizzard to host other titles from the Activision Blizzard side of Microsoft's gaming business, including Call of Duty games, Avowed is the first title from elsewhere in Xbox that's available to play through the client.
Will other Xbox games follow Avowed to Battle.net?
I'm very curious to see how this experiment ends up working out. Microsoft's various game development publishers have a massive number of games launching later this year, some of which are still to be announced, but as of the time I'm writing this, Avowed is the only title from Xbox Game Studios that'll be launching in Battle.net, with Compulsion Games' South of Midnight eschewing the platform for its launch in April.
Bethesda Softworks and id Software's DOOM: The Dark Ages is similarly restricted to just Steam and the Xbox app on PC. I've asked some Xbox developers if any other non-Activision Blizzard games are currently planned for Battle.net and no one has been aware of any definitive plans, but this is obviously an area where things could rapidly change in the weeks and months ahead.
Personally, I'm all for anything giving players more choice and options. If this works and other Xbox games come to Battle.net, there'll still be other steps to take, such as unifying achievements and making sure Xbox Cloud saves are universal no matter where players choose to enjoy their games.
Many members of the Windows Central gaming team (myself included) are currently playing Avowed, and we'll have plenty of coverage to share when the game embargo ends on February 13.
Avowed is slated to launch on Feb. 18, 2025 across Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC via Steam, the Xbox App, and Battle.net. As an Xbox first-party game, the standard edition is included day one in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass. Anyone preordering the Premium Edition of the game can start playing early on February 13. For more details, consult my Avowed preorder guide.
