Need official Answer please - Is play anywhere using PC engine or Xbox engine

borkley · June 1

I keep getting in to "discussions" with other players about whether the play anywhere version uses the PC engine on the Xbox servers or that everything is Xbox but playable on PC.

Will I get the same level of graphical fidelity playing through the play anywhere client that I would get playing through the PC client?

Please can we get some official feedback on this issue.

borkley · June 2

Thanks for the awesome response community relations. 🙄

SilverBride · June 2

Never mind. I was misunderstanding.

LootAllTheStuff · June 3

This is a very interesting question, and I wish I had the answer!

The only thing I know is that, when you download any game to your console that has an "optimised for X|S" tag, it automatically installs the best version supported by the hardware. I would *hope* that the same was true of "Play Anywhere" titles when installing to PC. Unfortunately, this is the one piece of information that doesn't seem to be in any of the MS FAQs and explainers.

To OP: had you tried asking MS if, as a general principle, the PC version would be installed on PC? It's what I would *expect* the system to do, but then I also expect a great many things that turn out to not be the case when it comes to Windows....

freespirit · June 3

@borkley you might find the answer you need in this thread......

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/688887/eso-on-xbox-game-pass-and-xbox-play-anywhere/p1

There are multiple staff posts that might shed some light.

I apologise if you've already seen the thread but if not it might help.

Balibe · June 3

Below is the news release today (06/02), see the article as it might answer some of your questions ......

https://elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/69935

code65536 · June 3

Will I get the same level of graphical fidelity playing through the play anywhere client that I would get playing through the PC client?

Having installed this today, yes.

You're connected to the Xbox servers, not to the PC servers. And you are locked to gamepad mode. It's actually almost identical to if you had enabled Console Flow mode on the PC client (which addon developers have been using for the past year to test console addons on PC), except that it connects to different servers.

(Also, things like voice chat and the addon browser are available too, but I put that down under the "connect to different servers" column since those are features that depend on the fact that you're connect to console servers rather than PC servers.)

borkley · June 3

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom Can we please get a simple statement to put this discussion to bed. Even the official release announcement from today is vague regarding this.

Does the play anywhere version have the same maximum graphical fidelity as the stand alone or steam PC client?

Yes or No from an official source, please.

borkley · June 3

code65536 wrote: »

Will I get the same level of graphical fidelity playing through the play anywhere client that I would get playing through the PC client?

Having installed this today, yes.

I thought the same but I have had "discussions" with others that say they've also played and the quality isn't as good.

Basically I just want to ensure that I'm not wasting the power of my PC by playing this version and a simple answer from an official source would put this to bed.

code65536 · June 3

borkley wrote: »

I thought the same but I have had "discussions" with others that say they've also played and the quality isn't as good.

This particular version of the game has extensive video quality settings that match the settings offered on the PC version. Did they make sure that all the settings were set correctly and matched what they have on the PC version? Because the defaults that it set weren't all that great, but once I changed them, it looked exactly like the PC version (not surprising, since it's the same engine, same assets, etc.)