Xbox ANZ Launches Emoji Based Game Pass Recommendations

July 22, 2020

In another world first and slightly weird announcement out of Xbox Australia and New Zealand, the team have announced their latest innovation to game pass recommendations: An automated emoji based hashtag response system on Twitter. That’s right, you can start getting official, automated Xbox Game Pass game recommendations via emojis on Twitter.

The system works by taking emojis that you post, along with #AskXboxGamePass, and translating them into a game recommendation. The example given by the team is using the controller and explosion emojis to request a new action game to play.  The news only calls out a handful of specific examples of emojis, but I imagine you could probably try some weird and dumb combinations of emojis to see what pops out just for the hell of it. Honestly? We’re pretty interested to see what recommendation comes from something like the flag emoji. Honestly, we really have no idea what it will spit out, if anything at all!

Want a guide on how to request certain genres? Xbox ANZ have provided the following genre/emoji translations: Action: 💥, Classic: 🏺, Platformer: 🧗‍♂️, Puzzle: 🧩, RPG: 👑, Shooter: 🎯, Simulator: 🚗, Sport: 🏉 or Strategy: ♟. With these emojis, plus a computer or controller emoji, you can control what specific genre and system your recommended game comes from.

So if you’re looking for a new game to play on Xbox Game Pass from the hundreds of games already available or just want to have some fun messing with the algorithms, jump over to Twitter now and get tweeting!