Do PC purchases with game pass app count toward punch card?

The "Valid for..." bit is just explaining that you can buy the games from any platform that offers the digital games, be it PC (App), XBox or from the website...but only Xbox games (interestingly, the punch card still only says Xbox One games!).

However, there are a lot of games that can be played on PC as well as there are plenty of Play Anywhere games....just doesn't include PC only games

You remind me of another point. I'm technically not interested in a PC only game but a PC version of a game I played on Xbox. I played "Surviving Mars" back when it was on game pass but would like to play it on my PC this time around. I find that some games play better with a mouse than a controller (sometimes vice versa) and city builders are among them. I don't know exactly how Play Anywhere works but can I buy it on console than Play Anywhere on my PC with a mouse?

Hello, My name is Jesse. I'm an Independent Advisor and a member of the Microsoft community and I'd love to assist you today.

I spent quite some time researching this as it's been something I wanted to know as well. According to the countdown page, "Only eligible for Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S titles. Xbox 360 titles will not count towards completion of this offer. Valid for eligible digital purchases only from Microsoft Store on Xbox, Windows, or online."

That said, I don't believe purchases on the Xbox Game Pass app for PC counts.

Okay it's been four days since I bought a game on the game pass app and it hasn't registered on the punch card. I'm pretty sure it's not just the punch card being slow to register since I also bought another game that was priced $35 on the Xbox console afterwards and it did register. If the PC game was going to register it I'd have likely complicated the punch card already. Therefore I'm officially declaring that it's not going to happen. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the quick response. I was afraid that would be the answer. I just wish the instructions were a bit clearer. Like how it says "Only eligible for Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S titles" then says "Valid for eligible digital purchases only from Microsoft Store on Xbox, Windows, or online" the keyword being Windows. It makes it sound like it could be purchased on PC which got me confused. Since Microsoft owns both Xbox and Windows I don't see why they'd care which I bought from. But I'll respect their terms for now.

Thank you that was quite helpful. In the meantime I've decided to do an experiment. Since the sale will still last awhile I'll just buy it on the game pass app for PC then see if the punch card triggers for it in the next few days. I'll still have to make multiple purchases anyway to activate it and Surviving Mars isn't that expensive at the moment. If not I'll just buy something else later. Then I'll post the results here.