Ambitious video game "Quantum Break" was first presented as exclusive to the Xbox One console, then as a joint release for Windows 10 computers. Now, after just five months on the Windows 10 Store, it's being re-released but through one of the PC's most popular retailers, Steam.

At its unveiling in 2013, action adventure game "Quantum Break" was an intriguing new title in Microsoft's Xbox One line-up. It features a mixture of time-travelling action, adventure, and conspiracy, with live action, television-style episodes sandwiched between each of its five main acts. Actors like Shawn Ashmore (the "X-Men" movies), Aidan Gillen ("Game of Thrones") and Dominic Monaghan ("Lord of the Rings") lent their likenesses and acting talents to the game.

Fast forward two years and the singular blend of live-action drama and player-directed hijinks is coming to the PC's biggest gaming portal, Steam. Finnish studio Remedy had developed "Quantum Break" which was closely associated with Microsoft's Xbox One from the moment it was unveiled in 2013.

To some surprise, "Quantum Break" was announced as a simultaneous PC release just two months before its April 2016 arrival. The hook was that it'd be exclusive to the newest version of Microsoft's PC operating system, Windows 10, and would be available only through the largely ignored Windows Store. More surprising still, then, is Xbox's latest announcement that "Quantum Break" is coming to PC gaming's best-known network, Steam, from September 14, for PCs running Windows 7 and up.

Subsequent sleuthing has revealed that plans for a Steam release of "Quantum Break" were put into action in May, not long after its Xbox One and Windows 10 release. Even so, the timing seems a little quick -- Remedy's previous title, "Alan Wake," took two years to go from Xbox 360 to PC -- but "Quantum Break" was originally supposed to release late 2015, and September 2016 marks around a year since then.

It's possible that Remedy, which remains independent from Microsoft, had a 12-month exclusivity deal in place, and held to it despite the delay into April. So there's no guarantee that other Microsoft exclusives like "Gears of War 4," "Sea of Thieves," and "Forza Horizon 3" will be seen outside the Windows Store as quickly, if at all. "Gears" and "Sea of Thieves" are both made by Microsoft-owned studios; the main "Forza" franchise as well. But collaborations with external studios, such as Comcept's "ReCore" and PlatinumGames' "Scalebound," could very well be found outside of the Windows Store before too long.