Xbox app can't install paid games on ARM devices

brandyballoon · May 2, 2022

I can't for the life of me find how to open a support ticket directly with Microsoft - the website just keeps sending me around in circles, so this is my best bet for now I guess :-/

There seems to be an ongoing problem where the Xbox app fails to install paid content on ARM machines. Please refer to this:

https://kb.parallels.com/en/125640

That article is titled "Playing Windows games via built-in Xbox app in Parallels Desktop", however it turns out that the problem can be reproduced with Windows 11 running natively on ARM Surface devices, which suggests the problem is related to the machine architecture, and that the VM is a red herring.

Anyone know a solution to this? It's very frustrating that I can't install games that I've paid for.

[edit] It might be specifically a Game Pass issue, if that helps at all.

:)

brandyballoon

I don't think you understand that the problem is that the download fails with an unexplained error. It's not even trying to install it or run it. The games may not work, and I accept that, but I don't know that they don't work because the download fails and I can't even try! Parallels can't do anything about it, because the problem is unrelated to virtualisation.

The Windows OS is not running under emulation, it's the ARM version. I have not had any problems running other x86 or x64 software on it, including things that require DirectX 11. I have succesfully installed and run games from Steam on the same VM.

The problem I was asking about is specific to the Xbox app. If it really can't work, why not display a meaningful message? After clicking install, it says "Preparing 0%", quickly followed by "Error 0%" and "Something unexpected happened" and "Error code: 0x00000001"

brandyballoon

I don't have a laptop. It's a desktop M1 Mac Mini. It cost under $1000 brand new and it runs X-Plane 11 at over 100 fps on low settings and an acceptable 30 to 35 fps on high settings. This is comparable to the Intel i5-8400 based gaming PC with GTX1060 GPU that I owned previously. The Windows 11 VM running on Apple Silicon performs just as well in general as Windows 10 did on the Intel machine.

The only snag I've run into so far, asided from the Game Pass problem, is that the Windows VM can't run anything that requires hardware virtualisation, such as Docker. This is to be expected because it's a VM.

Ricardo Lechuga

You can't install games on Windows currently without using the Xbox app

brandyballoon

OK I had a look at that, thanks. It was mentioned that Game Pass itself is not compatible with ARM. The problem with that is that the Windows Store directs the user to the Xbox app for the download, and then the download fails. This seems to be unrelated to whether or not the particular game in question will or will not work.

So I guess the question is... How can I install the game *without* using the Xbox app?

Thanks.

brandyballoon

Here's another thread on the same issue:

https://forum.parallels.com/threads/xbox-app-cant-download-games-download-throws-error.355397/

Xbox app can't install paid games on ARM devices