For casual and hardcore gamers alike, Microsoft’s Xbox team just added a sorely needed and seemingly no-brainer feature to the Xbox app on PCs with HowLongToBeat.
As the name implies, HowLongToBeat is a new subtle feature that will give gamers an estimate on how long it would take to complete a game. HowLongToBeat will be tucked into the details page for most PC Game Pass games and is powered by HowLongToBeat’s community-driven participation via its website that lists game lengths.
If you’re in the mood for something you can crush in a day or two, or maybe looking for your next long-term game, you can view the details for the game to help decide what to download and play next. Check out the category that best matches your play style:
- Main Story (Required): You complete the main objectives, just enough to see the credits roll
- Main Story and Additional Quests/Medals/Unlockables: You take your time, discover and complete additional tasks not required
- Completionist (100%): You strive for every achievement, every medal and conquer all that the game has to offer
- Combined: All play styles considered during estimation
Since HowLongToBeat is community-driven it also means gamers using the feature through the Xbox PC app can also contribute their own time and give a little something back to the community.
As of now, HowLongToBeat details for games including platform information, playthrough notes, ratings, reviews and playstyles link out to a website, but it’ll be interesting to see if Microsoft begins to incorporate that data directly into the Xbox app in the future.
In addition to the HowLongToBeat feature, the Xbox app was also updated with tweaks to the app’s launch performance with the developer team claiming “the app now launches up to 15% faster.”
Other performance fixes have led to 99% crash-free session improvement, and a reduction in false positive download and install incidents. Lastly, the Xbox PC app team is working on improving the search results for game content within the app and has seen up to 20% faster results of relevance being displayed.
As usual the Xbox app team asks for feedback and gamers can contribute through the Feedback Hub, Twitter, or the Xbox Insiders Reddit, to help add to list of features and fixes they would like to see going forward.
