Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Free XBox Games on Windows 8

Still on the fence as to what to actually do with Windows 8? As Microsoft starts to expand the XBox brand to go beyond just the console itself and its games and more into other infrastructures [XBox Video, XBox Music, and Xbox Games for Windows at the moment] to better cope with the changing preferences of the computing public. People may still not like the whole Metro/Modern UI, but for casual users, the various apps available in the Windows 8 store would definitely get to suit a lot of people's needs.

As with The Gunstringer being made free for a limited time last January, the Windows 8 app store is providing a few more XBox games for free. Previously included as paid apps, it is time to grab these free goodies while they're free. One might think that these are piss poor apps, but these are Miniclip-made games, and Miniclip has done a great job of porting their games from the browser to the various mobile platforms. In particular, I've been playing Gravity Guy when it was earlier released for Android and the transition to this new platform has been seemless.

Since these games are included as XBox Games for Windows, these also include the standard 200 gamerscore for achievements, so that's an extra incentive for players to boost their gamerscore-slash-bragging rights a bit.

Included below is the screenshot for reference. One can access these games through the Store app, and/or the Games app on your Windows 8 Start Screen.