Industry site Gamasutra reports today that Microsoft has upgraded Bing’s capabilities when it comes to searching for games. The article mentions that Microsoft has included “around 100 PC casual games directly into the service” and that they are “hooking up search results to IGN’s 35,000-strong game database.”

What does this mean for gamers? Well, if you’re searching for a major console or PC release you’ll get a more relevant list of results back that includes links to reviews, images, videos and other related content. You will also notice that, for many titles, there is now “a specially-designed game info box that appears at the top of the non-sponsored search results.” This box contains information about the game including a brief description, platform of release, genre and ESRB rating.

Perhaps the biggest part of the update are the new Play Now links. When searching for casual PC games, many times you’ll find a Play Now link returned in the results that jumps directly to an instance of the game in Bing Online Games.

I tried this out for myself and while it wasn’t drastically different from other search results, the info box and Play Now links were a nice touch.

The new Play Now feature as seen in a search for Bejeweled 2