Cross-play has been a major highlight of 2018. Nintendo and Microsoft have been supporting this feature and we have seen multiple games come out this year that support cross-play. Sony had its reservations but has had a change of heart due to the demand for the feature. It seems that we might get cross-play between Steam and Xbox as well.
Steam open source multiplayer matchmaking source code made its way to GitHub after the recent update and it seems to mention Xbox related networking features which we have not seen before. It is more than likely that Microsoft is working with Steam to integrate cross-play.
Microsoft has its own store so why would it want to bring Steam into the equation? Steam has a higher user base as compared to the MS Store and being a gamer, I have never used the MS Store and I am sure that there are plenty of other people just like me that feel the same way.
This could be a way of pushing Windows 10 to the masses. Microsoft might only enable this option for users that use Windows 10. That way the company could push the newer OS and provide benefits to the user for doing so. Seems like a win-win situation to me.
This is mostly speculation and none of this has been confirmed by Microsoft or Steam, so take this with a grain of salt. It is possible that this is nothing at all. It is also possible that Valve and Microsoft were working on something but things did not work out. All we can do for now is wait and see what happens.
We know that Microsoft is getting ready to announce the upcoming Xbox Scarlet and cross-play between Steam and Xbox might be another feature that the company is interested in marketing. It would be a very cool feature indeed and something that I am looking forward to.
Let us know what you think about Cross-play between Xbox and Steam and whether or not this is something that you are interested in.
