Avowed’s $90 version will let you play the game 5 days early

Avowed is the latest game to offer early access as part of a more expensive edition.

For $90/£90, the premium edition of Avowed includes a skin pack, a digital art book, and the game’s soundtrack. It also includes five days early access to the game, meaning premium edition players can start playing the game on February 13, as opposed to February 18, 2025.

Many games in recent years have offered early access as a paid perk for buying a more expensive edition of a game. Microsoft‘s Starfield also offered this and offered a premium edition upgrade which meant players who planned to play the game on Game Pass could pay a one-time fee to just receive the premium edition contents.

Avowed, developed by Obsidian, will be released on Xbox and PC on February 18. The game will be added to Game Pass one day one.

This week Microsoft said that Avowed’s delay wasn’t the result of quality concerns with the game.

Announced in July 2020, Avowed is a first-person fantasy action RPG set in the world of Eora, which was originally introduced in Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity series.

Game director Patel Carrie Patel has said Avowed will be similar in length to The Outer Worlds and that it has over 10 different endings.

In an interview this week, Xbox boss Phil Spencer expressed his dislike of “manipulative” expansions that don’t offer players “a unique point of view”.

In a separate Bloomberg interview published this week, the executive said Xbox is still open to more acquisitions following last year’s $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard.

He also said Xbox wouldn’t rule out any first-party game coming to PS5 or Switch, and that Xbox is working on handheld prototypes.