With Microsoft's ambitious Play Anywhere initiative has made PC and Xbox gamers' game get together. According to reports, it made unexpected strides on Friday with it announced that "Gears of War 4" cross-play will be expanding beyond cooperative mode, which would include multiplayer competition.

Apparently, the feature is limited to Social Quickplay rather than the usual competitive ranked matches as per Microsoft's statement. So, players' dreams of a "Super Bowl" of "Gears of War 4" play between the best Xbox and PC will have to eventually wait.

Remarkably, when Microsoft had tested "Gears of War 4" expanded cross-play features at the end of last year, it was discovered that participation heavily favored the Xbox One. Note that 115,000 players took part in the test weekend. There was an enormous 91-9 percentage split between the Xbox One and the Windows 10 platform wherein 750,000 matches were played, according to PCWorld.

When it regards to which platform came out as the top, Microsoft said that the two sides were pretty fair. Both Windows 10 and Xbox players had more likely close matched results when comparing their average kills and deaths, score and skills per battle.

However, that Microsoft said the game's Core and Competitive rankings will stay parted. Take for example Xbox players will only be playing Windows players to maintain equality.

Apparently, this all matters because when this is played with a decent community of competitive and polite opponents, multiplayer gaming, indeed, can be great. Cross-play simply opens up such experience to a greater number of potential players.

Microsoft has reportedly doing its best to establish Windows and the Xbox as one joyful, collective ecosystem and cross-play would be a big part of it. "Gears of War 4" alongside a handful of other games such as "Rocket League" and "Killer Instinct" has supported cross-platform multiplayer.