Playing previously purchased Xbox games (Play Anywhere games) on a PC running Windows 10

MichelleBailey2 · May 4, 2021

My son has an Xbox and a Microsoft account.

He has purchased games, some are installed on his Xbox and some are installed on an external hard drive. I don't know whether or not they are installed anywhere else, like on a cloud account.

He wants to be able to play his "Play Anywhere" games from a laptop running Windows 10.

It appears he has the Xbox app and the Xbox Console Companion app on the laptop. But we don't really know how to use these apps or what their purposes are. He says when he views his games, the game he wants to play does not display. When he searches for the game in the Microsoft store, it will not allow him to download the previously purchased game, he is prompted to pay for the game that he has already purchased. He says he has tried every help forum, and the advice is old advice that no longer applies and/or doesn't work. At this point he has invested more time than the $20 it would cost to just repurchase the game, but we don't want to pay for a game he has already purchased.

Can someone help us to understand (in simple language) what we need to do? Thank you.

:)

Arminator

... Xbox Play Anywhere is an official Xbox emulator for PCs running Windows 10. Games that are also on Xbox and are going to play on PC are not a PC platform!

Xbox Play Anywhere is NOT an emulator. The Xbox Play Anywhere games are compiled for the Windows 10 PC platform as well as Xbox. There is no emulation going on, which would unnecessarily slow down the games. They run natively on Windows 10, not an emulated
Xbox environment.

Smwutches

Click the icon you see and it'll show the account. Click that and a new pop up will come up and let you sign out.

Farscape247

open the store, sign out of the store and sign in with your name and details, download cuphead then sign out of the store and back in with his name and job done. you can do this with any play anywhere titles on your account.

Smwutches

Cuphead is Play Anywhere so he should be able to download it. Have him try the Microsoft Store app and make sure he is signed into that app with the same account that purchased the game. On the top right of the app, click the 3 dots and go to "My Library". He should be able to find a list of all games he owns that are available to download on the PC under ready to install and should be able to install it from there.

Farscape247

my the sounds of the price i think you may be referring to minecraft, this game is not a play anywhere title and has to be purchsed on each platform.

if this is not the game you are on about then let us know which game.

Playing previously purchased Xbox games (Play Anywhere games) on a PC running Windows 10