It has undergone a number of iterative changes since its inception and, never ones to rest, the team behind Xbox Game Bar continue to evolve the platform with their number one inspiration in mind, their community.
Beginning with providing video capture, quick access to audio settings and a frames-per-second counter, the want of the PC gamers has long been at the core of the team’s philosophies. Today’s announcements exist to fix the trouble of having to Alt+Tab between apps while trying to game, the solution is to welcome said apps into the Game Bar ecology through widgets.
The first two to make the leap are XSplit’s Gamecaster, a popular streaming app, and so-called system booster Razer’s Cortex, though Xbox claims to have seen incredible interest from other industry leaders and expect the number of widgets to grow before too long. It’s all very intuitive with widgets appearing in their own little storefront so that you’re able to browse and install them at will without ever having to exit out of Game Bar.
The team also announced a partnership with Intel to bring key features available in the Intel Graphics Command Center to the program. Though it’s still early in the partnership and the initial benefits, said to include power profiles and access to display settings, will be limited at first, as both the IGCC and Game Bar evolve, so too will the widgets.
While there is no shortage of wonderful partners so far, Xbox is opening up the platform to developers to create custom widgets using the Game Bar SDK. Click here to learn more about building your own personalised widgets.
