Living with Windows 10 S: Games

Living with Windows 10 S: Games

While hardcore gamers will never be satisfied with Windows 10 S, this system should be fine for more casual gamers.

Taking a break from the more painful aspects of my Windows 10 S testing—ranging from the basic behavioral changes that using it requires to the lack of decent Store apps—I decided to see what the gaming scene looked like. Depending on your needs, it’s actually not terrible, and unlike with traditional apps, you can see the start of a reasonable games selection happening in the Windows Store.

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

But there are issues. Of course there are.

First, because Windows 10 S is not an option on most PCs, you’re pretty stuck with Surface Laptop or, worse, an instantly forgettable range of low-end Chromebook competitors that are being sold only in education. Surface Laptop is a fine business laptop, for sure. But with its integrated Intel graphics driving a high DPI display, you’re going to stuck playing low-end games, or mid-tier titles with lowered settings.

This isn’t about Surface Laptop per se, but I’m testing Windows 10 S on a new Surface Pro, which features the same integrated graphics. On the Core i5 models of each, you get Intel HD 620 graphics, but on the Core i7 versions, like the one I’m using, you have a much improved Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 chipset. So something resembling gaming is at least possible. Not ideal. But possible.

Dedicated graphics are, of course, preferable. But systems that ship with such chipsets would also need to natively support Windows 10 S somehow. For example, the Surface Book I’m also using during the current trip sports an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 965M chipset. And while no one would claim that classifies it as a gaming PC, it is still supported with NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience app, which keeps the drivers up-to-date and optimizes each game for the chipset automatically. It’s not available on Windows 10 S.

Things are a bit brighter for those who want to game with a controller. Microsoft’s excellent Xbox Wireless Controller works just fine with Windows 10 S, naturally. And it does so in both wired (USB) and wireless (Bluetooth) modes, just as it does on the normal versions of Windows 10. Wired offers dramatically better performance: If only Microsoft used its own Xbox controller connection hardware in its Surface PCs.

As for the games I’ve tested, it’s a short list. On this Surface Laptop-like hardware, less demanding games like Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition and Oxenfree seem to run just fine.

But I was more interested in something a bit more graphically challenging, so I also installed Batman: The Telltale Series and went through the opening sequence for the 1000th time since I’m familiar with how it performs on a variety of PCs. It’s not horrible, but there were occasional performance hiccups and stutters, and the game auto-set itself to pretty low-end settings. (Which honestly look pretty great; it uses kind of a nice, comics-like style.)

But here’s some good news. Even Windows 10 S has a pretty decent selection of games, as you can see by visiting the Games section in Windows Store. The Xbox Live games selection is particularly good with various Forza titles, Halo Wars 2, Modern Combat 5, ReCore, and more. Though, again, your ability to play higher-end titles will be limited.

And that’s Window 10 in a nutshell, right? Limited.

So your gaming possibilities are limited by both the hardware on which Windows 10 S is available and by the OS itself. And that means that Windows 10 S will only be OK for those who game casually, on the side. So, no surprises there.

 

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Conversation 6 comments

  • glenn8878

    09 August, 2017 - 6:32 pm

    <p>Can you adjust the settings if you have a better CPU and graphics card? You don't say if the settings are permanent. </p><p><br></p><p>So does Windows 10S means graphics drivers are behind and optimization is non existent? Not good at all. </p>

    • Narg

      10 August, 2017 - 1:53 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#165652"><em>In reply to glenn8878:</em></a></blockquote><p>What settings? Most games have settings individual to the game itself. That's not going to change. Nor does it have to change.</p>

      • glenn8878

        10 August, 2017 - 5:26 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#165850"><em>In reply to Narg:</em></a></blockquote><p>See Second graphic above. Individual game Settings. I don't even understand your comments. You ought to be able to change gaming graphics settings to your preferences. </p>

    • bsd107

      Premium Member
      12 August, 2017 - 3:33 am

      <blockquote><a href="#165652"><em>In reply to glenn8878:</em></a></blockquote><p>"So does Windows 10S means graphics drivers are behind and optimization is non existent? Not good at all."</p><p><br></p><p>I have that same question. I use nVidia desktop cards. I think the drivers do sometimes get updated through Windows Update, but rarely. But to stay current you need to download the installer programs from nVidia – I'd shocked if these worked under Windows 10 S</p>

  • Angusmatheson

    10 August, 2017 - 11:55 am

    <p>It is interesting to me that the first software store in the modern sense – unified payments, exists across devices, mechanism for update – I knew of was Steam. And it was just for games. When Windows 10 (or maybe even 8?) came out, Steam said that Microsoft was trying to kill Steam and they publically made a switch to Linux (not sure but I don't think many PC gamers made that switch with them). But if windows 10 S is the future, the future doesn't contain Steam and all games are bought through the Windows store.</p>

  • bsd107

    Premium Member
    12 August, 2017 - 3:30 am

    <p>"<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">So your gaming possibilities are limited by both the hardware on which Windows 10 S is available and by the OS itself. And that means that Windows 10 S will only be OK for those who game casually, on the side. So, no surprises there.</span>"</p><p><br></p><p>So… kind of like gaming on a Mac….</p>

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC