What you need to know
- Indiana Jones and the Great Circle supports Xbox cloud saves on Steam.
- While some Xbox games have supported cross-saves and carrying over progress some progress, these titles were usually co-op or online-oriented.
- It's possible we could see Xbox cloud saves as a standard feature for future games.
Something interesting has been uncovered.
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is now available in early access for Premium Edition buyers. While I played Bethesda Softworks and MachineGames' whip-cracking adventure on Xbox Series X, PC players hopping into early access through Steam are noticing a special feature.
As shared by @MauroNL3 on X (Twitter), Indiana Jones and the Great Circle allows players on Steam to use Xbox Cloud save games, effectively allowing players to go back and forth between their Xbox consoles and the PC version on Steam without the issue of losing progress.
Now obviously, Xbox games on PC through the Xbox app already support shared Cloud saves through Xbox Play Anywhere, and some online-focused Xbox games have already supported universal saves across console and Steam, such as Obsidian Entertainment's Grounded or Rare's Sea of Thieves. A single-player game getting this as a dedicated feature on Steam is new however, and it makes me wonder if this will be standard moving forward.
Reaction: Will Cloud saves one day be standard across Xbox and Steam games?
This is an awesome addition, and it's certainly something that I hope will be made standard in the future.
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I shuffle back and forth between my gaming PC and my Xbox Series X all the time for work. While it's not necessarily a big deal for some games on Steam, not having my progress carry over for larger first-party titles like Starfield can be frustrating if I just want to play for a bit or capture a particular screenshot. If this is a standardized feature for future first-party games like Avowed and DOOM: The Dark Ages, I'll certainly be using it.
Who knows where else this kind of feature could lead? Cross-buy seems extraordinarily unlikely, but deeper Xbox integration on Steam could happen, with additional features that make the overall platform consistent no matter where you're playing.
That seems especially important as Microsoft keeps numerous irons in the fire, experimenting with bringing non-Activision Blizzard games to Battle.net and working on some kind of dedicated Xbox handheld. The team finally started delivering on letting users play games they own through Xbox Cloud Gaming, and an Xbox Mobile Store is still in the works, even if it's been seemingly indefinitely delayed thanks to regulatory struggles with Google.
In the meanwhile, if you're still on the fence about diving into the world of Nazi-punching archeology, be sure to read my review of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, where I wrote that "From the manner in which every line is delivered and scene is shot to the smirk on Indy's face when solving a puzzle, it's clear that everyone at MachineGames just gets what makes Indiana Jones so special. This is a game that can sit next to the original trilogy with pride."
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is currently available in early access for Premium Edition buyers. The standard edition is arriving across Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate/PC Game Pass on December 9. A PlayStation 5 version is also in development and slated to launch in Spring 2025.
