Microsoft is about to make its Xbox Game Bar more useful for PC gamers playing Xbox Live-enabled games. Mike Ybarra, CVP of Xbox Program Management at Microsoft confirmed on Twitter today that the Game Bar will “very soon” allow gamers to check Xbox achievements while playing games.
https://twitter.com/MrAthnos/status/1171422562892570624
https://twitter.com/XboxQwik/status/1171633796933832704
For those unfamiliar, the Xbox Game Bar is gaming overlay built into Windows 10 that you can access by either pressing Win + G, or the Xbox button if you have an Xbox controller plugged into your PC. The Game Bar is highly cutomizable, with different widgets for Game captures and Mixer broadcasting, Audio Settings, Xbox chat, and more. The app integrates with various Xbox social features, though the Xbox Achievements part still belongs to the Xbox Companion app for Windows 10.
The Xbox Game Bar is currently the fastest Xbox experience that Microsoft created for Windows 10, as the Xbox Companion app (formerly “Xbox” app) remains pretty sluggish. The new Xbox beta app, which is based on Electron, is also not as fast as the Xbox Game Bar, and it has a different purpose with a big focus on Xbox Game Pass for PC.
There are now three different Xbox-branded apps on Windows 10, which is definitely a bit confusing, but the good thing about the Xbox Game Bar is that it can be useful for all PC gamers, even those who are not heavily invested into the Xbox ecosystem. And that’s why it’s great to see Microsoft iterating pretty fast on it, with all updates being handled by the Microsoft Store.
