PC gamers using the Xbox app will be excited to hear about a nifty new feature that will help them decide whether to install a game by giving them an estimate of how fast it's likely to run.
The rather clumsy name "Game Performance Tuning Indicator" gives you a rating for a given game based on how well the title runs on PCs with similar specs to yours.
As mentioned, this is just a prediction of game quality, but you should be in the right ballpark, and getting a green light that something "plays well on similar PCs" is definitely useful information.
As noted in the blog post (Opens in a new tab) (from Tila Nguyen, Senior Product Manager, Xbox Experiences) showcasing the new feature, it's now starting to roll out to the Xbox app, with the caveat that it will require quite a bit of information to make it more widely useful. For new games, of course, it will take some time before enough information is gathered about different gaming PCs and their performance to be able to provide a recommendation, and the system needs to find enough matches to your rig's specs. .
In other words, don't expect too much, too quickly, from the Game Performance Tuning Indicator feature, and you may not see related information in every game, but it will all leak out eventually.
The Xbox app has also seen some changes to make it easier to find your next game, like refining the search function to be more precise (and including games from EA Play and Ubisoft Connect in search results).
Analysis: a real time saver
Compared to third-party tools that only make comparisons to baseline system requirements, or just look at those requirements yourself, this performance indicator should give you a much clearer idea of how a game is likely to run on your PC. and it should be of great help in determining if such a game is worth downloading and installing.
After all, if a game is a heavy download, bypassing it because you find it will be slow could save you a lot of time and trouble. Not to mention avoiding unnecessary wear and tear on your SSD, perhaps gaming for five minutes before you get frustrated with the performance and uninstall it.
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