Sony is exploring one-time ‘cross-buy’ games on PC and PS5, leak shows
If you buy The Outer Worlds 2 or any number of major games published by Microsoft, you can play them on Xbox and PC with the same purchase. Now that Sony is committed to supporting the PC platform with its first-party games, it may be considering supporting a similar cross-platform purchase system between PC and PlayStation 5. Newly discovered assets indicate that this is in the works.
Leaks on social media show a “Cross-Buy” logo from files discovered on the PlayStation Store with a combined “PS5/PC” logo attached. While this is far from definitive, it seems like a buy-one-and-play-anywhere approach to me. “Anywhere” could include streaming options, which Sony recently expanded to its Portal handheld, but it’s unlikely to include an actual Xbox home console.
As Tom’s Hardware notes, this isn’t the first time the “Cross-Buy” label has been used by Sony. Back when the PS Vita still worked, you could buy games and have them available on your handheld, PS3 and PS4. But Sony moved away from that by ceding the handheld market to Nintendo. All PS4 games can be played on the PS5, and some can be “upgraded” to more powerful hardware with additional graphics features.
As I own both a gaming PC and a PS5, the idea of owning games on multiple systems is particularly exciting to me. I’ve often had to think about purchasing a game on more powerful PC hardware. Or the system installed in my living room is much better for multiplayer. It certainly doesn’t help that we seem to have fully embraced the idea that $70 is an acceptable price to pay for a new game. Accessing it on PC and console with a single purchase would go a long way toward easing that pain in my wallet.
