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Windows 10: One product family, one platform, one store

Microsoft announced it has made some significant backend improvements to the Windows 10 Store that technically allow for offline play — but the number of hoops you'll need to bound through to enable this feature remains significant. Offline play is ane aspect of the Windows Store that'due south lagged well behind competitors similar Steam or fifty-fifty services like Origin, so it's skillful to run across Microsoft making an effort to offer this feature.

There are more than details on how to enable this adequacy over at the Xbox support site, and you'll want to read about the capabilities and restrictions of the mode before you starting time fussing with it. The kickoff thing to know is that unlike Steam, which allows offline play from any device associated with your business relationship, the Windows 10 Store merely allows you to have one designated offline device — and you tin can simply modify which device is designated three times a twelvemonth. To set an account to offline, perform the following steps:

  • Make sure that you lot're online.
  • Check that your device has the latest Windows updates: Get to Offset > Settings > Update & security > Windows Update and meet if any relevant updates are available.
  • Open the Store. You'll be prompted to sign in if you haven't already.
  • Select the Me icon (this is your contour movie).
  • Select Settings, then nether Offline Permissions, brand sure that the toggle is set to On.

Once you've completed this step, you lot'll need to launch each title individually that y'all want to play in offline fashion. You will need to sign into your Xbox Alive account from within each title, though it's not clear why this footstep has to be performed. Once it is, however, yous tin can run titles while remaining offline (provided you lot properly followed the steps higher up). While information technology's great to see Microsoft adding this feature, the process of actually playing offline is cumbersome at best.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Y'all tin play great games similar Rise of the Tomb Raider… and I'grand sure at that place'southward others. Probably.

If Microsoft actually wants to compete with Steam, it'southward going to need to do better than offering poor imitations of a amend process. Adding capabilities is proficient, simply they need to be at to the lowest degree equally like shooting fish in a barrel to utilize on Microsoft'south ain platform every bit they are on a third-party utility. Most games can exist played offline through Steam by simply setting the shop to offline mode. There are exceptions, and games do need to be launched at least one time before offline manner can be engaged, but this has been the general dominion for a number of years.

With the Windows Store, only being allowed to change your "Offline" device three times per year is ridiculously strict — so much so, one suspects that Microsoft's goal was to offering bullet-signal capability for comparisons against Steam, but not to create a feature anyone would actually want to utilise.