Xbox One games get a shuffle button for when you can't decide what to play

(Image credit: Future)

Your bloated Xbox One games library just got a little easier to navigate, with the addition of a 'Surprise Me' button to randomly select a title for you to play.

Can't decide what to play next? The small purple button will hang out in the top-right corner of the screen when you're browsing your Library on the Xbox platform, and jump you to a random title when indecision gets the better of you.

It's worth mentioning that this won't auto-play the selected game, and you can click however many times you like until you get a result that satisfies you.

It's not a new feature across the board; after all there's a similar function in the Xbox Games Pass library, which features access to over 100 games for a monthly or annual subscription price, and can save you looking up each game individually.

But this addition in your own Library of purchased games may be the bit of spontaneity you need to reconnect with (or finally start playing) the neglected Xbox One games you own yourself.

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Curation, curation, curation

Let's face it: there are a lot of games out there these days, with the kinds of monthly giveaways included in PS Plus or Xbox Live Gold often leading to backlogs of titles you never quite got a round to playing. And when you're not sure what you're in the mood for, having an algorithm bounce you to different titles might be what stops you from living out the rest of your days in one game's multiplayer mode.

It may seem like a small addition, but it points to an increased awareness of the need to supply gamers with flexible forms of access, and even game curation. We see this with services like Xbox Games Pass, or Xbox Games Ultimate (which allows you to 'subscribe' to an Xbox console through monthly payments, rather than an up-front fee), while the next-gen Xbox Scarlett and PS5 consoles will even allow players to selectively download sections of their chosen games. 

That means you can save space on the console's SSD by only storing the single-player or multiplayer modes from a game, which makes a huge amount of sense if you tend to play a campaign once but sink the rest of your time into online competitive play.

But what to play first? Shuffle away…

Via Kotaku

Henry St Leger

Henry is a freelance technology journalist, and former News & Features Editor for TechRadar, where he specialized in home entertainment gadgets such as TVs, projectors, soundbars, and smart speakers. Other bylines include Edge, T3, iMore, GamesRadar, NBC News, Healthline, and The Times.