Can You Play Xbox One Games On Windows 10 Without An Xbox One

Windows 10 includes an Xbox app and other Xbox-related features. Many of these features are useful even if you've never owned an Xbox in your life, and i of these features is even useful for Windows ten users who never play games.

This isn't the first time Microsoft has attempted Xbox integration with Windows. Microsoft tried that with Games for Windows LIVE, which launched about a decade ago dorsum in 2007. But Windows 10's Xbox integration seems to be a amend endeavour than Games for Windows LIVE was.

A Built-in Screen Recorder

RELATED: How to Record PC Gameplay With Windows ten'due south Game DVR and Game Bar

Let'southward lead with the most useful characteristic. Windows has a built-in screen record that can exist useful even to people who aren't PC gamers, but it's sadly cached in the Xbox app where many people won't detect it.

The Game DVR feature is designed for you to record your gameplay and share it. However, y'all tin can employ it to tape whatsoever application, making this a congenital-in screen-recording tool for more than just games. Yous tin can launch the "game bar," which contains a recording selection, by pressing Windows Key + Chiliad past default. This keyboard shortcut can exist customized in the settings inside the Xbox app. Click the "Record" button on the game bar to start and finish recording.

The Xbox app can assist you upload and share the clips, but they're just video files you can access on your difficult bulldoze.

Xbox One-to-PC Streaming

RELATED: How to Stream Xbox One Games to Your Windows x PC

If yous own an Xbox 1, y'all can employ the Xbox app to stream games from it to your PC over your local network. Even if your Xbox I is in your living room hooked up to your TV, you tin can connect an Xbox One controller to your PC and play Xbox One games. The Xbox I does the work and streams information technology over the network, allowing y'all to play those games at your computer. That means your spouse or roommate can use the TV while y'all keep up your Destiny streak. To exercise this, open the Xbox app, click the "Connect" button at the bottom-left corner, and connect to your Xbox 1. You'll be able to stream games to your PC from here.

Information technology's basically the opposite of Steam's game streaming or NVIDIA'southward game streaming–instead of streaming games from the PC to your living room, information technology allows you lot to stream games from an Xbox 1 to a PC. Microsoft has hinted that PC-to-Xbox streaming may get in in the hereafter, allowing you to stream PC games and play them on a Television receiver an Xbox One is hooked up to.

Sony has promised to offer PlayStation 4-to-PC streaming soon, too. There's already an unofficial solution, and a way to stream PS4 games to whatsoever Android device.

A Window to Xbox Live

The Xbox app included with Windows 10 is substantially a window to Xbox Live on your PC. It features a friends listing, assuasive you to chat on Xbox Alive or join a party from your PC. It as well includes an activity feed, a store you lot tin can utilise to purchase Xbox One games from your PC, your gamerscore, and achievements. Connect the Xbox app to an Xbox One panel and you can view Idiot box listings, as well.

Nearly of the features here will only actually be useful to people who already take Xbox One or Xbox 360 consoles, although Microsoft is aiming to hook more Windows games into its Xbox services. It'due south doing this through the Windows Store, releasing more and more PC games that are integrated with Xbox. Only games from the Store can take that Xbox integration, it seems.Ascension of the Tomb Raider has Xbox integration if y'all purchase it from the Windows Store, but not if you buy it from Steam.

The Xbox app will sign you into Xbox Alive with the Microsoft business relationship you sign into Windows 10 with by default, merely you tin can cull to sign in with a dissimilar Microsoft account if you have those accounts separate. It doesn't require a paid Xbox Live Gilded subscription for anything.

Xbox Achievements, Cross-Buy, and Cross-Platform Multiplayer

Games you purchase–or download for free–from the Windows Shop can integrate with Xbox. In fact, the Xbox app itself contains an "Xbox Store" department that allows you lot to browse and purchase games from the Windows 10 Store. Essentially, information technology provides some other window to the Windows Store.

Currently, many games offer Xbox achievements that tin can add to your gamerscore–something you probably don't care about unless you're an Xbox gamer. The Solitaire app included with Windows 10 is a good case, every bit information technology's integrated with Xbox and provides achievements and gamerscore points. Microsoft's Minesweeper app, which is available from the Windows Store, also provides Xbox achievements.

RELATED: Why You Shouldn't Buy Ascent of the Tomb Raider (and Other PC Games) from the Windows Store

However, games tin can also offer more useful Xbox integration. Some games are beginning to back up cross-buy–if you buy Breakthrough Break, you lot'll become information technology for both Windows 10 and Xbox One. Hereafter games may back up cross-platform multiplayer between Windows x and Xbox One, and then you tin can play on your PC with your Xbox-using friends.

Not all games are guaranteed to support these features, but they can. For example,Rise of the Tomb Raider, the beginning big-budget PC game to announced in the Windows Store, doesn't offer cantankerous-buy between Windows 10 and Xbox One. Information technology too doesn't offer cantankerous-platform multiplayer, although information technology does link to Xbox to offer achievements and gamerscore points. Games in the Windows store definitely accept their problems, simply if they included some of these features, it might be a bit more enticing.

Music, Movies, and Boob tube

The Groove Music and Movies & TV applications included with Windows ten were previously named Xbox Music and Xbox Video. You lot tin subscribe to Microsoft's music service and play games on your Xbox, or rent and buy movies and Tv set shows from the Windows Store. If you lot do, you tin can lookout them on either your Windows 10 PC or Xbox–they're tied to your Microsoft account.

To buy digital videos or music, open the Windows Shop on your PC. You tin can then open the Movies & TV and Music apps on your Xbox and you'll notice the same content you purchased or rented there, too.

Microsoft is working on bringing Windows 10 apps to Xbox One, which would allow those same apps to run on Xbox. This may hateful you could purchase an app from the Store and install it both on your Windows ten PCs and Xbox One one day soon.