Windows Game Bar is finally useful: Xbox’s best update in months
Microsoft unveiled its March Xbox updates, introducing a refreshed Windows Game Bar, a new Cloud Gaming feature, and expanded benefits for free-to-play games. These enhancements address both user interface and functionality, providing a smoother gaming experience on PC.
Game Bar on PC receives a sleeker design. The Home Bar and widgets, including Capture, Performance, Resource, and the Widget Store, now boast a cleaner, lighter appearance. Quick access options like fast-launching games, controlling audio settings, and monitoring performance are enhanced with less visual clutter.
Discord, another popular gaming platform, also updated its UI this week with similar changes.
Wider spacing between sections in the app and full dark mode support make navigation smoother. Both Game Bar and Discord now allow for widgets while in-game.
The new Cloud Gaming feature enables seamless switching between Assassin’s Creed titles without returning to the Home page. Microsoft promises this capability will soon extend to other cloud games and titles supporting Stream Your Own Game.
Game Pass benefits for free-to-play titles like Heroes in the Storm are now available and will expand to include Call of Duty: Warzone in April.
Xbox users can access in-game cosmetics, characters, in-game currency, and more, now available in games like Overwatch 2 and Valorant.
Microsoft shows it’s keeping up with its competitors by giving the Game Bar a much-needed visual overhaul. Why? Because a clutter-free interface turns out to be important when gamers are in the heat of battle—no time for accidentally pressing the wrong buttons.
Lots of Discord users may simply shrug at the idea of inserting the Discord widgets in-game. Since the existing Discord-screening process has already simplified navigation, what’s stopping Microsoft, deep pockets notwithstanding, from benefitting from it too?
Nintendo Switch has perfected cloud gaming shifts, yet here Microsoft aims to match the ease of transitioning gameplay states. Gamers want their action to be as smooth as possible—they won’t tolerate a second delay. If Microsoft nails this, players will face-off with Yen and the bounty hunter of the world instead of fatal load times.
Given the surge in Call of Duty: Warzone user growth—in 2021, it set a record of 10 million concurrent players on Steam—providing essential incentives would attract dedicated fans and make Game Pass a valued subscription, showing how beneficial this can be for Warzone Frienzers and PAC-gamers. Xbox even managed to put “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” into the Game Pass—a slick tactic to draw in more gamers.
The entire game catalog available for Game Pass members is included now in asset accumulation and cosmetic management—a smart move that tinkers with a small aspect of monetization, rather than assaulting it.