Microsoft spent Wednesday morning detailing all the new apps, web integration, and fun bells and whistles of the Windows 10 Creators Update. A solid chunk of Windows 10 users are PC gamers, and they have a very specific set of needs and use cases. They weren’t forgotten today, as the team based in Redmond, Washington, announced a series of new features specifically for the game-minded among us.
Streaming with services like Twitch and YouTube Gaming has become more popular than ever, with Minecraft in particular grabbing a significant chunk of that market. As such, the Creators Update will roll game streaming to the Beam streaming service. It’s built right into the Xbox app, allowing gamers to fire up a stream — and notify their friends and clan-mates — with the push of a button.
But just watching your friends play doesn’t always scratch the itch, so the Xbox app will also support custom tournaments for you and your friends to compete against each other. The Xbox app will handle all of the administrative tasks, and keep track of statistics, wins and losses, and determine the winner at the end. If you really want to test your mettle, you can even open up your tournaments to the entire Xbox community. Just pick a game, set a time, and off you go.
Finally, audiophiles will be pleased to know that Microsoft is bringing Bitstream pass-through to the Xbox One via a software update. It includes support for Dolby Atmos, so all your movies and high-quality audio won’t suffer as a result of using your Xbox One as a media center.
This handful of new features bolsters an increasingly impressive showing for the Xbox app on Windows 10. Play Anywhere games are bringing some favorite titles to the PC side, and it’s clear that support is only going to grow over time.
For years, Call of Duty’s campaign mode has used big, scripted set pieces to tell the overarching story amid all the adrenaline-pumping action. The 2023 Modern Warfare 3 tried to shake up the established formula by introducing a handful of short open combat missions, and I genuinely liked the idea, but the game's overall negative reception seeped into how those missions were received.
I feared the next iteration might abandon the idea because of the backlash, but I am glad it didn't. MW4’s “Stranded” mission uses the same approach, but instead of fragmenting it across the campaign, it puts it all in a single large-scale open-world mission.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.