The Xbox One will soon get a "Surprise me" button in the game library that will let users randomly select which game to play next. These subtly genius features don't come around all that often, so take a moment and breathe in that rarified air. Ahh, yes, convenience is coming. When a gaming platform gets on in life, just like the Xbox One in its sixth year since release, players' libraries can become incredibly large. That's especially true with these last generations of consoles, thanks to game giveaways like the Games with Gold program. If the platform happens to be backward compatible or entirely generation-less, like the PC, then libraries can grow seemingly without limit.
It's when that happens that gamers who have been with the platform for years can feel over-encumbered with choice, like carrying a little too much in one's inventory on a Skyrim adventure. The ability to randomly select a game to play within dozens or even hundreds of titles sounds lovely, and it's exactly the kind of feature that garners love out of seemingly nowhere.
The Xbox One player community will soon have access to the 'Surprise me' button, per a tweet from Xbox Insider – an Xbox-run news publication. The button is available now for players in the Xbox Insiders beta testing program, so that means it will eventually make the jump to all players if it's working as intended. The 'Surprise me' button will show up in the top right-hand corner of the Xbox One games library, and pressing it brings up a launch prompt for a random game. It does not launch the game, though. It simply brings up the option to play the game alongside a cancel button. That's good news if there are some duds in a library that gamers would rather skip.
Since the 'Surprise me' button is already out in the wild with the Xbox Insiders who can test features ahead of the rest of the world, we know what it looks like in motion. A quick video captured by Reddit user CaCHooKaMan features the player hitting 'Surprise me' a few times as one of their 600+ games pop up again and again.
The Xbox Insider Twitter account did not elude to a release date for this fresh shuffle feature. Given that it's openly being used, one can assume it won't be too long before all players have the opportunity to shuffle back and forth within their own library. When that happens, hopefully, the opportunity to discover a forgotten title will present itself. That's exactly what these types of features are designed for, and we love them.
While we know this is coming to the Xbox One, the 'Surprise me' feature would even be a welcome addition to Xbox Game Pass on PC. Fans can hope, right?
Sources: Xbox Insider, CaCHooKaMan - Reddit