The Xbox app will now tell you how well a game will run on your PC

[Daniel Sims]

In brief: A minor new feature is coming to the Xbox app on Windows, which will make it easier to tell how well a game will run on any given system. Microsoft hasn’t revealed the fine details, but it’s available now for Xbox Insiders.

Xbox Insider users browsing the Xbox app should start seeing words like "Should play great on this PC" on the store pages of some games like Doom Eternal, Forza Horizon 5, or Yakuza Zero. The Verge notes many titles as of now still say "performance check not available yet."

To enter the Insider program on Windows, install the Xbox Insider Hub app from the Windows Store. In that app, agree to join the preview program, and a selection of beta features to join should appear under "previews."

It's not clear if there will be other performance indicators beyond the one saying "should play great." Additionally, "great" performance is rather vague. It is unclear whether this means the game will run at 60 frames per second in 1080p or some other standard.

Game pages in the Windows Store and Xbox app already list system requirements. The Windows Store even uses checkmarks to indicate which hardware requirements your machine meets. Your rig's weak spots are indicated with links leading to the "about" page in system settings.

The new label seems designed to provide a general overview of expected performance. It could also help novice users who don’t know much about system requirements quickly see if their computer will run the game sufficiently.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/92524-xbox-app-now-tell-you-how-well-game.html

 

[Dimitriid]

I honestly this is going to work basically because of what the article highlights: every game is different and has different standards. There's games that scale up and down *incredibly well* meaning that if you turn on Ray Tracing at 4k it will crush anything you throw at it, even a 3090 or 6900xt but can also run 60 fps at 1080p on the minimum requirements or even lower than the minimum if you just drop it to lowest detail.

How are those devs going to rate themselves? How are they're going to be rated by Microsoft? Will it be up to the devs or up to Microsoft?

Because think about it: Microsoft wants as many people as possible to buy games through their ecosystem so they really want to push the hypothethical game above that set to lowest enables resolution scaling down to 720p to achieve that 60 fps and looks fairly grainy but runs great.

On the other hand just because a game dev includes those options doesn't means they *want* people to judge their game by them and if they're ok well guess what? Nvidia also factors as they paid a lot of money to put their name on the game along with "Nvidia Ray Tracing" and "Nvidia DLSS 2.X" stickers on it so they might have something to say to the dev about allowing microsoft to tell people "Yeah, you actually don't need that stuff the game will look pretty close to max settings and run on a 1650 from 5 years ago" because well, that doesn't sells 3080s and 3090s for them.

TL;DR is this: All this will do is show the uninitiated that PC gaming either just looks far worst or cost 4x as much money as console. And come to think of it, that does works out great for Microsoft selling more Series S and Series X consoles now, funny how that works right?

 

[brucek]

I'm guessing this feature was requested by sales/support, and will be configured by them, vs any individualized technical assessment.

If this can head off someone buying a game that has no prayer of running on their computer, then burning up customer support lines, followed by trashing the game on social media - it is doing its job.

I'd bet the backend is they ask the publisher to provide maybe a few tiers of specs (minimum / good / great / etc) then examine the system to see which one it clears.

 

[Nestea]

I honestly this is going to work basically because of what the article highlights: every game is different and has different standards. There's games that scale
.........
es X consoles now, funny how that works right?

probably just something like userbenchmarks (yes I know) but just the collection of data and law of averages.

it's better to be honest about it upfront then later have to justify yourself and deal with a sh storm or bombard support with returns.
I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually will receive boutique games, catered towards a higher paying audience.