Xbox performance indicator tells you if your PC is good enough to run games

By Cristina Alexander June 16, 2022

Worried about how your favorite Xbox game would fare on your PC? Microsoft has put your mind at ease by rolling out a new game performance indicator on the Xbox app on Windows.

Dubbed the Game Performance Fit Indicator, the new feature was released in the latest update on Thursday, giving you an idea of how certain Xbox games perform on your computer compared to other ones with similar specs before you download them. For example, if you want to play Sea of Thieves but want to know if it’s suitable for your computer, you’ll see a label that reads “Plays well on similar PCs,” which predicts that the game will run perfectly on your computer as well. Other games may give you a different label that indicates otherwise because some features call for different spec requirements.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

“If your PC isn’t up to the task of running a graphically demanding game, you’ll be able to view the game’s system requirements to get more details on what you need to run the game,” Tila Nguyen, senior product manager lead on Xbox experiences, explained.

Nguyen was quick to add that not every game will run against a performance check, especially games that have recently been added to Xbox Game Pass, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge and Assassin’s Creed Origins. As such, the Game Performance Fit Indicator won’t show up on every game on the PC Xbox App until Microsoft has more information to recommend what games go well with your PC and which ones require more specs, or even a PC upgrade, to play them well.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming

Until that update comes, you may have to run games without a performance indicator against other performance checking and system recommendation sites, such as Can You Run It.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Cristina Alexander

Gaming/Mobile Writer

Cristina Alexander has been writing since 2014, from opining about pop culture on her personal blog in college to reporting…

Computing

Horizon Forbidden West is a marvel — if your PC can handle the heat

Aloy shooting a bow in Horizon Forbidden West.

More than two years after its release on PS5, Horizon Forbidden West is now available on PC. The original game, Horizon Zero Dawn, has become a mainstay for performance testing on PC, and it's one of the pillars of our GPU reviews. The sequel ups the ante in a big way with more graphics options and a more demanding world overall.

I've been playing the game over the past week, drilling down on the best settings, comparing DLSS, FSR, and XeSS, and testing the bounds of performance. Horizon Forbidden West lives up to the standard set by the original release, though weaker GPUs with only 8GB of memory will struggle with high graphics settings and resolutions.
Best settings for Horizon Forbidden West PC

Gaming

Age of Mythology: Retold will launch on PC and Xbox at the same time

Key art for Age of Mythology: Retold.

Microsoft and World's Edge gave us our first glimpse of its upcoming remaster of real-time strategy game Age of Mythology: Retold during Friday's New Year, New Age livestream. They also confirmed that it will launch on PC and Xbox later this year.

Age of Mythology: Retold's segment of the livestream began with Art Director Melinda Rose introducing the gameand teasing that it will contain all-new 3D character models, animation, textures, and UI. Rose also highlighted the details of the character models for units like Medusa, Pegasus, and Cerberus. Each time players upgrade a unit, their design will change slightly. We then got a look at its key art, as well as confirmation that Age of Mythology: Retold will be released later this year. It will launch on both PC and Xbox at the same time and is the first World's Edge game to do so.

Gaming

Xbox and Embracer’s mass layoff explanations aren’t good enough

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer during Updates on the Xbox Business | Official Xbox Podcast.

The wave of layoffs that has happened over the past year in the video game industry is well-documented. Some of the biggest culprits are Embracer Group, which has laid off nearly 1,400 workers across several of its studios since the start of a restructuring program last July, and Microsoft, which laid off 1,900 developers across Xbox, Bethesda, and Activision Blizzard in January. After relative silence around these layoffs, leadership at both companies finally tried to offer more transparently into what happened.

Neither of their statements are good enough.