A gamer-friendly convenience may be on the way: reliable reports point to a PlayStation 5 cross-buy system that would let you purchase a game on the PlayStation Store and receive a free copy of the same title on another platform.

The latest hint came from Amethxst, who spotted new icons on the PlayStation Store that strongly suggest cross-buy is planned. Shortly after, trusted leaker Billbil-Kun confirmed on Dealabs that these icons do exist on PlayStation Network and can be surfaced in the account About section by entering special characters.

Although the symbols appeared only recently, development seems to have preceded their rollout. Billbil-Kun found a crossbuy-tag label inside several website CSS files and noted it was added to PlayStation’s site back in June. Because this is not leftover data from the PlayStation Vita days – when certain games carried cross-buy between handheld and home console – it looks like something new is indeed in the works.

The PS5/PC icon implies a purchase on one platform would grant the other version at no extra cost. It is also plausible that the system could extend to the rumored PlayStation handheld said to arrive alongside PlayStation 6. Even if it does not, PS5-to-PC cross-buy alone would be a major step – both to match what Xbox has offered for years and to explore how such entitlements might function on handheld devices.

This raises another question: could PlayStation launch a dedicated digital store on PC in the near future. There is no firm answer yet, but the door is open. What is clear is that Microsoft has provided cross-buy in various forms for roughly a decade, and Sony adopting a similar approach would significantly narrow that gap.

Source: WCCFTech, Dealabs