How to add Windows Store games (e.g. Forza Apex)

[ConcreteLlama]

Hi guys, I had a little trouble with this originally so thought I'd post how I got Windows Store games to work (note: I have only done this with Forza Apex as that's the only Windows Store game I have). The reason it's a bit awkward is that there's no obvious path to the .exe file, and when I did eventually find it's location, you can't actually get there without certain admin priveleges higher than a normal primary user (as in you'd probably have to enable the admin account). I wanted to avoid that so came up with this: TL;DR for Forza Apex:

Open Notepad

Paste the following text into the text document:

start forzamotorsportapex:

NOTE: The colon at the end isn't a typo

Save the text file as a bat somewhere (e.g. start_forza.bat)

Open LaunchBox

Go to Game>Add

For the application path, locate the batch file you created, and fill in the rest of the game details manually (or just search for Forza Motorsport 6 - unfortunately Forza Apex isn't in the DB as far as I can tell)

So this is how I did it, and hopefully it'll work for other Windows Store games too:

Start your game

Start task manager

Find the game in the list of running processes. As it's a game, if you order by CPU or memory usage, it should be near the top

Right click on the game, go to properties

If you're lucky, the "Description" field will say the .exe name (e.g. forzamotorsportapex.exe)

Take that name, and remove the .exe part from the end

Open notepad

Type start, followed by the name you just noted down, followed by a colon, e.g. start forzamotorsportapex:

Save the text file as a batch file (File>Save As>Select a location and call it whatever you want with .bat at the end, e.g. start_forza.bat)

In LaunchBox, go to Game>Add, and fill out the game details, then under "application path", select the batch file you created

Hope this helps some people! I hit the issue and couldn't find any reference to anyone else that has, so hopefully this will help people on the forums and random Googlers. It may be possible to streamline this process or maybe to grab the list of installed windows apps (I know you can do Get-AppxPackage in powershell but it doesn't return the actual app start command - if anyone can figure out how to list possible Windows Store start commands that would likely be very useful for the LaunchBox devs so they can automagically add Windows Store games without having to do this weird workaround). Anyway, enjoy!

[DOS76]

I have my own work around you open a run box and type shell:AppsFolder find the app you want in there and create a shortcut to your desktop. Next you go into LaunchBox and you hit the add button in the bottom right corner then you enter your games name I put in Windows Store as the platform but that would be up to you what you wanted to make the platform name. Then you point LB towards the shortcut for the game and you are good to go.

[ConcreteLlama]

Nice

DOS76 said I have my own work around you open a run box and type shell:AppsFolder find the app you want in there and create a shortcut to your desktop. Next you go into LaunchBox and you hit the add button in the bottom right corner then you enter your games name I put in Windows Store as the platform but that would be up to you what you wanted to make the platform name. Then you point LB towards the shortcut for the game and you are good to go.

Nice, thanks! That's way simpler. Didn't even know you could launch an apps folder like that. Any chance auto scanning of windows store games will get added to LB any time soon?

[SentaiBrad]

More than likely not, but everything is always on the table. Microsoft doesn't want those shortcuts to be accessed by anyone but them, so we're unsure if we could reliably import them. We've been wanting to do this our selves for several months now though.

[AutumnSounds]

I have a slightly more elegant/simpler solution for getting windows store apps/games in LaunchBox:

⭕️ Copy and paste this into file explorer.
%windir%\explorer.exe shell:::{4234d49b-0245-4df3-b780-3893943456e1}

⭕️ What you have here is a list of all your installed games and apps INCLUDING from the Windows App Store.
⭕️ Right-clicking on an App store game gives you the option to "Create Shortcut".
⭕️ With this shortcut you can either get the direct address of the App without having to go through task manager, etc.
Or you can just place it in your LaunchBox/Games directory and point LB right at the short cut. Hope that helps! - Confirmed tested with 'Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta' and 'Tennis in the Face'

Edit: didn't read the entire thread, the above is pretty much what was suggested by @DOS76, so credit to them.

Edited October 24, 2018 by AutumnSounds
Layout / formatting since forum update ages ago.

[Neutralis]

On 5/31/2016 at 2:03 PM, AutumnSounds said:

I have a slightly more elegant/simpler solution for getting windows store apps/games in LaunchBox:

⭕️ Copy and paste this into file explorer.
%windir%\explorer.exe shell:::{4234d49b-0245-4df3-b780-3893943456e1}

⭕️ What you have here is a list of all your installed games and apps INCLUDING from the Windows App Store.
⭕️ Right-clicking on an App store game gives you the option to "Create Shortcut".
⭕️ With this shortcut you can either get the direct address of the App without having to go through task manager, etc.
Or you can just place it in your LaunchBox/Games directory and point LB right at the short cut. Hope that helps! - Confirmed tested with 'Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta' and 'Tennis in the Face'

Edit: didn't read the entire thread, the above is pretty much what was suggested by @DOS76, so credit to them.

This one actually worked for me. Thank you.