War is breaking out of the confines of Halo Wars 2: Ultimate Edition.
Halo Wars: Definitive Edition will hit the Xbox Store, Windows Store, and the Steam PC gaming service on Thursday, April 20, according to developer 343 Industries. Previously, you could only play this version if you owned the Ultimate Edition version of Halo Wars 2, which debuted for PC and Xbox One in February. By breaking out this version of the original game, Microsoft is giving a wider audience the opportunity to try the upgraded visuals and native support for Windows and Xbox One.
This is also the most recent sign that Microsoft isn’t fully abandoning Steam as a service for selling its first-party PC games. Halo Wars: Definitive Edition supports Xbox Play Anywhere — a feature that enables you to buy a game once and play it on PC as long as you get it through one of Microsoft’s digital stores. But that feature doesn’t work if you buy it through Steam. But that’s the only thing that won’t work.
“RTS fans on Steam will be excited to know that Halo Wars: Definitive Edition includes full support for Steam Achievements as well as a server browser, where anyone can create and host a game for others to search and join,” 343 Industries community manager Brian Jarrard wrote in a blog post.
And clearly, many fans are going to want this game on Steam and won’t miss the Xbox Play Anywhere compatibility, and Microsoft isn’t hoarding the game to keep as a treasure exclusively for its own platforms.