Xbox App On Windows Now Tells You How Long It Takes To Beat A PC Game

Microsoft has partnered with HowLongToBeat to ease the guessing out of how much time it will take to beat a game. The quite simply and rather aptly named HowLongToBeat website tells players how long it will take to beat single-player story driven games.

This is quite a useful tool, as many people may not necessarily know how much time they need to invest to play and beat a game. Additionally, time to completion is often a driving factor for many gamers as to whether or not they wish to purchase a title. If a game is too short, some gamers may not consider it worth the cost. If a game is too long, then one might consider completion too daunting a task. Of course, all gamers are different, which is why the feature is so useful.

The new feature is already available on the Xbox app for PC. Whether this will be added to consoles is hard to say. All gamers' experiences may be different. Some people who like to take their time and enjoy the beautiful environments presented to them. Others prefer to speed run to completion as quickly as possible. Within the Xbox app all a user needs to do is click on a single-player game of interest, scroll down and they will see estimates of how long it will take for that game to be completed under the details tab. After a few games, a player may get a sense of how their own pace fares against the extrapolated expectations.


The details about how long to beat will be listed as follows in the app.

• Main Story (Required)
  • You complete the main objectives, just enough to see the credits roll
• Main Story and Additional Quests/Medals/Unlockables
  • You take your time, discover and complete additional tasks not required
• Completionist (100%)
  • You strive for every achievement, every medal and conquer all that the game has to offer
• Combined
  • All play styles considered during estimation

Along with the HowLongToBeat information is a link to the web page associated with that game on the website. You just need to click "View Details" to access reviews, walkthroughs, guides, and player averages, and even statistics for other platforms, if applicable.

With the partnership, the HowLongToBeat website published Xbox Game Pass statistics with some rather interesting numbers. Including 470 Xbox titles, 449 PC titles, and 105 EA Play titles, the estimated time to beat all of them is 15,630 hours. It also indicated the average rating of the games is 73%. We expect this update will make it easier for most users to know whether it's worth pulling the trigger on a game purchase or not.