PlayStation may offer its own Play Anywhere cross-buy for PC games

Sony could be resurrecting PlayStation's cross-buy feature, possibly for PC and PS5 games, but also potentially for the new PlayStation handheld system.

PlayStation may offer its own Play Anywhere cross-buy for PC games
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Senior Gaming Editor
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TL;DR: Sony may reintroduce cross-buy with a PC/PS5 dual-entitlement feature, allowing one purchase to grant access on both platforms. This initiative could signal a new PlayStation PC launcher, enhancing Sony's ecosystem and competing with Microsoft's Play Anywhere by simplifying game ownership across devices.

Sony's PlayStation brand may be readying its own answer to Xbox's Play Anywhere with a simplified cross-buy initiative.

PlayStation may offer its own Play Anywhere cross-buy for PC games 1
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Sony might bring back cross-buy for the modern PlayStation era. Dataminer Amethxst has purportedly uncovered some interesting new graphics that could indicate at a PC/PS5 dual-entitlement cross-buy feature coming to the PlayStation Store. The idea is simple: Buy 1 game, and play it on 2 platforms, PC and/or PS5--one purchase, two licenses.

Technically, cross-buy isn't new for Sony. The company offered cross-buy between its handheld and console hardware lineup during the PS Vita, PSP, and PS3 days. Microsoft took the idea and ran with it, spending years and millions of dollars better connecting its console and Windows PC ecosystems, eventually facilitating anext-gen device that merges the two together.

This also poses the question of how Sony would handle the dual-entitlement license structure, potentially indicating that the company is readying its own PlayStation PC games launcher/storefront, not unlike the Epic Games Store and Steam. The cross-buy feature could be something made exclusive to Sony's theoretical PC launcher/storefront, which would urge gamers to buy directly from Sony.

When it comes to Microsoft's Play Anywhere, that initiative is only available on games purchased directly from Microsoft via the Xbox store on PC or console. Microsoft sells games on Steam, but game licenses purchased on Steam aren't eligible to then also be played on Xbox consoles via Play Anywhere.

There's speculation that the cross-buy initiative--should it prove to be real--may also be related to Sony's plans for a native PlayStation handheld. If that were the case, it's unclear how this will pan out, eg whether or not the system will run its own separate, consolidated version of PlayStation games like the Vita or PSP, or whether it will run native PS4 and PS5 games.