2022 has been an incredible year for PC gaming. We have been so fortunate to have partners bringing amazing games to PC Game Pass like A Plague Tale: Requiem (on day one!), Persona 5 Royal, and rolling out the full game release of Grounded. All these games and hundreds more are in the Xbox app on PC, and I’m excited to share our final update for the Xbox app on PC as the year comes to a close.
Before we get to what’s new, I want to thank everyone in our community for your continued feedback and discussions to make the PC gaming experience even better. We’ll be back with more updates and more games in 2023, but for now let’s recap what updates you can see right now!
Riot Games Now Available with Xbox Game Pass
As we shared earlier today, exclusive benefits for Riot Games are now available for all Xbox Game Pass members. You can find Valorant, League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, and Legends of Runeterra in the Xbox app on PC. To get started, pick which game to download and play, then follow the prompts to link your Game Pass and Riot accounts. We’re excited members can start playing Riot games with your Game Pass benefits on PC!
Delivering a Faster and More Responsive App
This year, we continued to improve the performance and reliability of the Xbox app. With recent updates, the app now launches up to 40% faster. We have also made fixes to the Game Pass tab so that it loads up to 30% faster and is more responsive as you browse games.
Game Installation and Management Features
In February, we introduced a series of features to make installing PC Game Pass games better to meet the expectations of PC players. This includes features like accessing local game files, installing to any directory, moving games between drives, easier ability to mod games, and verifying and repairing installs.
In June, we rolled out the PC Bootstrapper, which provides a consistent and simple way for developers to integrate capabilities like Xbox services and game saves, as well as communicate game launch status, ensure the installed game is up to date, and more. This helps deliver the best experiences for players.
We’re also committed to improving the reliability of game downloads and installs with every update. With the September update, we saw player reports of games that didn’t download or didn’t install successfully reduced by nearly half, and we continue to see success rates trending up month after month for players downloading, installing, and launching games. We’ve also added notifications when Gaming Services updates are required so that the app will always be fresh for the best game play.
Making it Easier to Discover Great Games
We’ve continued to update the app to make it easier to discover the games you’ll love. You can see how well a game will run on your PC before you download it with the game performance fit indicator, and we partnered with HowLongToBeat so that you can view estimates for how long it will take you to complete a game for most PC Game Pass games.
We’ve also made updates to make it easier to find your next game. Trailers, screenshots, and game descriptions are available at a glance right at the top of the Game Details pages and also show news from developers for most games. We changed the layout of the Xbox app on PC to make it easier to find new games, including more collections to explore, games front and center at the top of the tab, and improved accuracy of search. We also rolled out navigation improvements to find more games to play. All navigation is on the sidebar and the queue helps you easily track game installations so you can jump right in and play.
Thank you from our team for another great year of gaming. Please keep sharing your comments in the Feedback Hub, via Twitter, or the Xbox Insiders Reddit.