Microsoft has integrated Microsoft Teams with the Xbox Game Bar, allowing users to stream their gameplay in real-time to friends over Teams video calls. Up to 20 people can join a call to watch and chat together while gaming. The viewer can see both the game and overlaid video of friends. However, streaming performance is currently limited to 30fps or less, which is not ideal for viewing high-fidelity PC games. Viewers also cannot yet see overlaid video during gameplay. While this new feature aims to compete with Discord for social gaming, the integration still needs improvements to provide a comparable experience. Overall, Microsoft is trying to grow Teams communities and social features to rival other platforms like Discord.


Wtf who is this for

        • Me too. Teams is the worst for finding old conversations. They might as well be gone after a couple days pass.

          Not to mention lately teams will sometimes just not update with any notifications lately. So I’ll go an hour with no messages or whatever and then suddenly teams decides to update informing me that I missed a call and a handful of messages.

          Signing out and back in usually helps but man it feels like they took Skype and just Jerry rigged it

          • At least Slack has a usable user interface… Teams is, well, I’d rather sit on a cactus. Let me phrase it like this: We have Office at work. We also have a Slack subscription, because Teams is just so much worse in comparison…

            • I don’t know, I had to use Slack because of a specific customer, and I can’t stand the UI of it.

              The way it displays the reply’s… the confusing crap of the workspaces (which each one has it’s own account, and they are independent)… the (lack of?) inline images…

              I don’t like those two, but I surely hate Slack!

      • To be fair, teams has been ahead of slack on video call functionality for a few years. Noise suppression, screen sharing and additional functionality all seems to be a bit ahead.

        I use both for work. Slack is far superior when it comes to written messages, and I use slack for quick video calls with collegues, just because I don’t feel like booting up Teams, but for scheduled meetings or longer conversations with screen sharing we always use Teams.

        • I don’t need Slack to do voice calls. I could use something else for it. It’s just that the things that Slack is good at, Teams is horrible at, and Teams sucks for calls too. If someone calls me, the pop up that allows me to accept or decline the call should actually be responsive and not crash. When I’m browsing old messages, it should be able to render a simple text history without thinking about it for 30 seconds. When I get a message, the notification should occur every time instead of just when it feels like it. When I lose and regain my VPN connection, it should be able to dynamically reconnect without crashing or hanging on a disconnect message. If you’re going to put document integration into Teams, why is there not a tab system for open documents I need to keep open rather than forcing me to use the history on the back button or otherwise reload the document by clicking through to teams->team name->files?

          • I’ll be honest - it has never been an option for me or my workplace to use teams for anything but video calls for us developers. We have bitbucket for code, slack for dm, confluence for documentation, jira for tasks, email for async communication and Teams for video calls. Each one are great at what we use them for and kinda sucks as soon as we try to use it for something else.

      • Teams is included in most Microsoft/Office 365 licenses. And since a lot of businesses use those licenses already for office apps, email, Azure AD, SharePoint and more, it’s an easy decision to make.

        Teams is also neat because it’s integrated with SharePoint which makes access control easy for document sharing within a team.

        The Microsoft ecosystem is quite good for administration.

        The only one I know is close is Google Workspace but then you have the problem with having to use Google office apps which are lacking in functionality. I don’t believe Google Workspace have any AD equivalent features (except on chromebooks maybe).

    • There’s Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Teams.

      Microsoft Teams is for consumers and is the one preinstalled in Windows 11

      Then there’s Microsoft Teams. It’s for business. Is completely incompatible with the other Microsoft Teams and is a separate app.

      The icon is also “different”. One has the Microsoft teams logo in white on a purple background, the other has the Microsoft teams logo in purple on a white background (forgot which and which)

      I really don’t understand why they don’t use the Skype branding for the consumer version. They forgot how many billions they paid for that?

      • You also have Teams for Linux which is compatible with Microsoft Teams (Work)but no longer supported. It however isn’t compatible with Microsoft Teams (Personal) but if you try to use Microsoft Teams on Linux for personal use, it tells you to install the now non-existant Teams for Linux that only works with Microsoft Teams (Work).

        There’s also two different versions of logging out in Teams for Linux, Logout and Log Out. Both of which log you out but only one lets you log in as a different user.

        Don’t get me started with the Microsoft Teams PWA that is now the “way to use Teams on Linux” but isn’t the Teams PWA that installs if you try the normal way…

        All hail Microsoft Teams! At least I can stream the games I’m playing to my work meetings so people know I’m skiving.

      • I really don’t understand why they don’t use the Skype branding for the consumer version. They forgot how many billions they paid for that?

        That happened in a past quarter. Money spent in past quarters doesn’t matter. The next fiscal quarter is what matters.

      • The icon is also “different”. One has the Microsoft teams logo in white on a purple background, the other has the Microsoft teams logo in purple on a white background (forgot which and which)

        They do the same thing with PowerBI. THe cloud version is one icon, the PowerBI for Reports Server (aka locally hosted) is for the on-prem version. Pretty annoying.

        I work with Teams (Business version) daily. Have never even seen the other one.

  • @trashhalo This really feels like Microsoft’s Google Assistant moment - taking a duplicative effort of something they already had, gassing it to high heaven and shoving it *everywhere* despite not being asked for or welcome.

    Only time will tell if they will also follow Google’s approach of it slowly languishing until it crumbles apart and they do the process all over again.

  • hey that’s the tool that everyone uses and definitely isn’t only seen when you open it accidentally! I bet that will be a very worrying competitor to the well established platform from 2015!

  • Oh gee, great. I’m glad development effort was invested in this feature instead of something like having the web app be capable of showing 6 people in a conference call at the same time. /s

    • Sure but at least Discord actually works. Teams has always been a buggy mess any time I have had to use it. Furthermore, Discord doesn’t shove itself into every opportunity in an effort to remind me of its existence.