New Xbox Game Bar Hits Windows 10
By: AlanV
The Xbox Game Bar in Windows 10 is getting a major revamp inthe May 2019 update. The Xbox Game Bar team stated that, “As part of ourefforts and commitment to improve the gaming experience on Windows 10, we wantto bring PC players highly requested features based on their feedback. Thefirst step in that is understanding how gamers engage on Windows and making thefeatures and experiences they want easier to access, including social, music,performance and more.”
The Xbox Game Bar is an overlay that is natively built intoWindows 10 and will work with just about every PC game. There are a variety ofwidgets that gamers can customize; allowing them to stream their favoriteplaylist, message friends, or take screenshots. All without leaving their game.The only hiccup being games that are powered by the Vulkan API, which isthankfully rather short.
The music widget is designed to work with Spotify, so you’llhave to be a user of that service to really benefit. The Spotify app will alsoneed to be installed for this to work. If you meet these requirements you’ll beable to bring up your favorite songs and podcasts; and be able to tweak thevolume of both in-game music along with whatever you’re listening to on Spotify.
Xbox Game Bar also focuses on social features. Gamers willbe able to chat with their Xbox friends across a variety of platforms, and caneven tune in to Mixer streams with a picture-in-picture feature. If none ofyour friends happen to be online you can use the Looking For Group (LFG)component to find some new teammates.
The ability to capture in-game moments is also available.Letting gamers share their favorite moments with the rest of the internet.Although with the Xbox Game Bar you will be able to take your captures andstart the meme making process without ever having to leave the game.
This revamp of the Xbox Game Bar gets PC and the Xbox evercloser, fleshing out how Microsoft wants to integrate the two platforms. Thisnew experience certainly feels very similar to what console gamers get whenthey tap that main Xbox button. Although it certainly looks to be more featurerich.
If you want to see the New Xbox Game Bar in action watch the video below.