Xbox on Windows 10: What it is, what it isn’t, and what’s missing [Updated]

[Update, 8/13: Turns out some enterprising tweakers found a "very high" quality setting hidden deep in the Xbox app, which we proceeded to try out ourselves. Simply put, the setting makes a world of difference. It reduces artifacting and gets us very close to a 1:1 replica of the direct Xbox One signal, so long as users have either a very powerful WiFi router (which we used) or a direct ethernet connection. Also, that setting doesn't eliminate any of the occasional stutters we'd previously encountered. But should your setup be compatible, you'll want to make the tweak and enjoy the benefits post-haste.]

Original story: Throughout the 8-ification of Windows, Microsoft clearly failed to endear its OS to PC gamers. Above all else, Window 8's root-level Windows Store, and its unclear messaging on how it would coexist with other gaming software, was so bad that it lit a fire under Gabe Newell's ass to create an entirely new, competing OS built off of Steam.

It has been a long time since Microsoft was seen as an all-out winner in the "keep PC gamers happy" department. Sure, DirectX laid down the groundwork for the headache-free, high-end gaming we've enjoyed for over a decade—when's the last time you had to adjust IRQ and DMA settings for your sound card, for instance? But those are some long laurels to pin your reputation to at this point. Today, Microsoft is better known to PC gamers for Games For Windows, the Windows Store, and 2012's unclear Xbox Games On Windows initiative. What have you done for PC gamers lately, Microsoft?

Windows 10 brings two major initiatives intended to turn things around on this score. The first is DirectX 12, whose performance boosts, processor multi-threading optimizations, and Windows 10 exclusivity will be scrutinized in another article on Ars very soon. The second, which this article will focus on, is deeper Xbox integration than any Windows before it, by way of a major app and new features that connect console and PC players on the online gaming service. Because Microsoft has confused people in the past about Xbox features on computers, we have spent a little over a week fiddling around with the RTM version of Windows 10 to answer every Xbox-specific question you might have.

The Xbox app

Every retail version of Windows 10 includes a pre-installed Xbox app, and so long as you have a Microsoft account—the free one you've probably used to access other Microsoft services—you can become a free Xbox Live "silver" member and use every basic feature within the app. You'd better be online, however, as both the app's online and offline features require an Internet connection to function.

If you create a brand-new Xbox profile through the app, the service will automatically generate a new Xbox Live "gamertag"—your nickname seen in every single Xbox Live online game—with randomly chosen words and numbers, which we found puzzling. Changing that autogenerated name requires a dive through a few unclear menus, making this a brusque introduction to the world of Xbox for newbies—especially if they don't realize they have only 30 days to change the name for free.

[Update: Since a reader asked, we'd like to clarify that you can use a totally separate Microsoft/Xbox account within the Xbox app than whatever you used to log into Windows itself.]

Once you've logged in with an Xbox account, the app, like other Xbox SmartGlass apps before it, includes a number of rudimentary features that gamers can use to keep up with standard Xbox Live features: namely, profile editing, messages, achievement lists, and friends' recent activity. There's also a OneGuide tab which functions just like its SmartGlass counterpart, meaning TV watchers can flip through listings on their smaller Windows 10 screen while watching programming on their bigger Xbox One screen (provided their Xbox One is connected to an antenna or cable box, that is).

Weirdly, the Xbox app does not natively support customizing the service's "avatar" characters; instead, interested gamers are directed to the Windows Store to download a separate, free Xbox Avatars app. That app offers most of the same clothing and facial options that the Xbox 360 and Xbox One apps already deliver, but should users want to add any new avatar fashions, they'll be directed to a Web-based store full of free and paid options. That requires signing into your Windows account once more, and worse, it won't let users download free avatar items without entering credit card information (which is very much not the case on any Xbox console). Not a good sign...

We'll talk at length about the Xbox app's two biggest features, Game DVR and Connect, later in this article, which leaves two other tabs. One of those, the Store tab, is pretty puzzling, because it links to an external web browser store loaded almost entirely with smartphone-minded games. Asphalt 8, Crossy Road, Sonic Dash, Jetpack Joyride: It's a wasteland of Windows mobile software, as opposed to a bustling, Steam-like service.

The other tab, "My Games," will pop up for new Windows 10 users with nothing more than the years-old Microsoft Solitaire Collection on its list. (You'd be forgiven for having missed its Windows 8 debut, which Kyle Orland slogged through in 2012; what was once an optional Windows Store download now comes on every version of Windows 10, complete with miserable, subscription-based microtransactions.) We'll probably have to wait for the retail launch of games such as Fable Legends—which will eventually launch on PC and Xbox One simultaneously and enjoy cross-platform multiplayer—to see substantial changes to the Xbox "store" option in Windows 10.

Thankfully, that tab has a prominent "Add a game from your PC" option, but clicking that will load a list of nearly every .EXE file on your PC—with the glaring exception of any games in your Steam library. Worse, there's no search or browse button, so players can't tell the Xbox app to hunt for those Steam games' files, or any other potentially missing games. At the very least, the My Games tab finds and includes games with gateways such as EA's Origin and Blizzard's Battle.net, and loading such games through the Xbox app will bring up their respective gateway apps en route to loading the games themselves. But if you were hoping for a one-stop interface for all of your favorite games, the current Xbox app isn't it. We can only hope a "browse" button comes to the My Games tab to let us find our games ourselves.

Xbox One streaming

How about some good Xbox on Windows 10 news? We are happy to report that the coolest feature, Xbox One streaming to Windows 10 PCs, worked quite well in our own tests. It's advertised as a way for gamers to take their Windows 10 devices around the house and still access Xbox One content. Is Dad hogging the TV? Take a laptop to the bedroom, sign into the same Wi-Fi network as your Xbox One console, and you can still shoot aliens in the face.

The option required a surprisingly minimal amount of setup. We already had an Xbox One that was signed up for the console's "preview" dashboard program, meaning it was already compatible with Windows 10 streaming. As long as both our Windows 10 device and console were connected to the same wired or wireless router, the Windows 10 Xbox app could find the console instantly. Once that happened, we told our Xbox One to stream to our Windows 10 PC, at which point we saw a fullscreen stream of whatever had been on our Xbox One system.

The major catch was that we couldn't control any Xbox One content on the PC if we didn't have a controller connected, either to the Xbox One console (assuming we were in wired or wireless range of that console) or to our computer. Microsoft has not ushered in a new era of mouse-and-keyboard control in its console games, sadly, but it did make one very, very welcome concession: you can actually, finally use an Xbox 360 controller on Xbox One. So long as your X360 pad has a way to connect to a PC, and the console is streaming via the Windows 10 Xbox app, the older pad will enjoy nearly perfect compatibility (only rumble support is missing). Considering how many 360 pads we have lying around, this is a great way to get those pads back into action, especially for insane, eight-player couch competitions like IDARB.

The app has three unclear quality settings—low, medium, and high—and we managed to run the app at the high setting with minimal stutters on both a wired connection and a wireless, 5GHz connection. To keep the stutters at bay at a wireless 2.4GHz setting, we ticked down to the medium setting. But so long as we were playing offline games, lag and unresponsive controls were absolutely tolerable.