New Gaming Features Start Rolling Out in Microsoft Edge

Microsoft has started rolling out some new gaming features for Microsoft Edge, which the company had detailed earlier this month ahead of its Xbox games showcase. The new additions include a new Gaming tab on Edge’s New Tab page, a Clarity Boost feature for Xbox Cloud Gaming, as well as a new Efficiency mode.

The new gaming homepage is accessible from the Gaming header in the navigation bar at the top of the New Tab page. It features news about video games, game guides, live streams, tournaments, and more. If you’re signed in with your Xbox account, you’ll also see a widget showing recently played games you can launch via Xbox Cloud Gaming.

The new Clarity Boost is probably the most important update coming to Microsoft Edge, and it will make the web browser the best option for playing cloud-enabled Xbox games on the web. “Clarity Boost is a spatial upscaling enhancement that makes streaming games look clearer and sharper while playing in Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 and 11. It uses a set of client-side scaling improvements to improve the visual quality of the video stream,” explained Microsoft CVP Liat Ben-Zur.

The new Efficiency mode, which can be enabled in Edge’s System and Performance Tab, will also reduce the browser’s resource usage when a PC game is launched. “With this feature, you do not need to close the browser to play and reopen it when you are done. As soon as you close the game, Microsoft Edge will exit Efficiency mode and get you right back to where you left off,” Ben-Zur explained.

Lastly, Microsoft is adding a dedicated Games menu in Edge that provides access to casual games. The current selection of games includes Microsoft Solitaire, Microsoft Jewel, Microsoft Mahjong, and the existing Surf game inspired by SkiFree, a classic Windows game from the nineties. To access this new Games menu, you’ll need to click the ellipsis (…) button in the upper right-hand corner of the browser, and then select Games in the list.