Microsoft's Xbox app for PC has never given me the best PC gaming experience, so much so that I have uninstalled it from my desktop PC numerous times. Therefore, I am pleased that Microsoft is bringing the entire experience of using Xbox Game Pass for PC closer to Valve's platform, Steam, which is basically the foundation of any gaming PC.

Microsoft has announced that it has a new Xbox for Windows app for Xbox Insiders. About. Damn. Time to go.

This may seem like a minor update to fire up PC gaming, but to me it's important.

Last year, thanks to the cross-platform Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, my friends and I decided to play "Halo: The Master Chief Collection" on PC. For the most part, we enjoyed it, thanks to the precise mouse and keyboard controls.

But then Microsoft decided to implement an update. And something went wrong. I don't know if it was my PC, my crappy Internet connection, or some quirk in the Xbox app, but the update refused to download at a speed feasible for its sheer size. It only had a download speed of kilobytes/second. I was told this was a problem on Microsoft's part, but I uninstalled "Halo" in frustration. My plan was to download the updated game completely to another machine with a faster connection and transfer the game installation.

Annoyingly, I did all of this without realizing that I had access to the folder where the games using the Xbox app were installed. I ended up playing the rest of the Master Chief collection on the Xbox Series X

. There were times when downloads failed and updates did not seem to work.

And as I write this, the Xbox app is insisting that I install another software component to get the Xbox app to work properly, but for reasons yet unknown, the Xbox app says it is installing "Game Services" I'm stuck there. I am not a violent person, but the frustration caused by the Xbox app makes me want to throw my PC out the window.

This may all be on my end, but from a quick look at the various support forums, it seems I'm not the only one having problems with the Xbox app, especially with the installation.

If Xbox apps could simply copy game app folders like Steam does, many of these problems could be solved. When copying game data from an external SSD to a PC, all you need to do is put it in the common apps folder of Steam and tell Steam to install it; Steam is smart enough to detect that the data is on the PC and not bother trying to download it. [Hopefully this update for Xbox Insiders will bear fruit and the full Xbox app will be released. Because in my experience, I want to play more Game Pass games on my PC without having to wrestle with the frustratingly unfriendly nature of the Xbox app and the Microsoft Store.