Microsoft Finally Relaxes Game Management On PC

New Features Coming To Xbox App For PC

I’ve written about Microsoft’s paranoid attitude to game management before in relation to moving game folders and I’m hoping that my small contribution to the criticism was maybe heard somewhere and the denied permission message will be a thing of the past.

When installing a game bought from the Microsoft Store, you can choose where to install it and indeed, can move the game through Windows App settings, but that’s where the flexibility ends. Up until now, should you add a new hard drive or indeed carry out a clean Windows install, taking control of Microsoft games sitting on other drives was nigh on impossible since the folders appeared to be encrypted and taking ownership of those folders became a tedious, time-consuming process. Most of us simply downloaded the games all over again, resulting in duplicates and triplicates scattered around our PCs, and bearing in mind that many games now come in at over 100GB, that’s a lot of wasted space. In a fresh Windows install, Xbox for PC doesn’t see game folders from previous installations and since those folders are protected, the only way to remove them, for me at least, was to boot to Linux or WinPE, way outside the over-zealous protection of Windows.

A report in The Verge states that the Xbox app will soon allow you to edit local files, choose the install location, and mod any game you wish. This is welcome news indeed and comes with the promise that download speeds will also improve, which means that downloading a 100GB game won’t be such a chore. Microsoft has also released a video that explains all these improvements in much more detail.

Xbox Insiders To Get First Previews

Apparently, Xbox insiders will be the first to preview these new features, so I enrolled in the program, but to date, I haven’t seen the new features appear. The download speed is still very slow, something which I expect will change when the new features go mainstream.

I’ll update this report when I’ve had first-hand experience with these welcome changes.

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