Starting This Week, Xbox PC App to Integrate Major Gaming Stores for Xbox Insiders — Steam Excluded

Sure, let’s mess this up a bit in a beautifully human way.

—

So, here’s a bit of news that caught my eye—Microsoft is pushing its Xbox gaming on PC thing even more, like it’s full steam ahead or whatever. If you’re one of those Xbox Insiders with a Windows 11 rig, apparently there’s this new store system you can poke around in.

They dropped a blog post today. Microsoft did, I mean—announcing that Xbox Insiders get dibs on a new and shiny Xbox PC app version this week. Interesting tidbit: It’s supposed to gather all the “big-name PC store fronts” into one spot. They conveniently skimped on details, though. Typical, right?

Oh, and about Steam—something tells me it’s not part of the party yet. Call it a hunch or just good ol’ cynicism. Maybe I’m off, but soon enough, we’ll all know.

And get this, if you’re curious (read: nosy) like me, you can just hop onto your PC and check it out for free. Got the Xbox Insider app on Windows 11? Sign up for that PC Gaming Preview. Simple as that. So they say.

Microsoft’s like, “Hey, now your Xbox PC app’s gonna spy on… I mean, detect your games from other PC stores,” then sticks ’em in your Xbox app library. For now, all we see is Battle.net playing ball. More stores are coming, or so they claim.

Yeah, there’s a pic of the Xbox Ally with all this jazz on board. Microsoft really thinks it’ll be the next big thing, you know? (Image credit: Microsoft, if that wasn’t obvious.)

But if you’re like me and prefer simple things, you can ditch this feature. Just a quick trip to the settings panel. But if you leave it on—it’ll pull your games into your library and slap them on your “recently played” list. Helpful, I guess. Makes hopping between apps a smidgen easier, but don’t get your hopes too high—it’s not a magic fix.

Anyway—hold on, where was I? Yeah, so, you’ll still have to click through your launchers like always.

They’re putting a lot of oomph into making Xbox on PC better. The Xbox Ally, or whatever they’re calling it, is gonna debut with this aggregation feature and some Windows stuff to make life easier if you’re using a controller. Crossing fingers it’s all sorted by the holiday rush. But, eh, time’ll tell, right?