PC World - USA (2020-06)

20 PCWorld JUNE 2020

NEWS WHY MICROSOFT NEEDS AN XBOX LAPTOP

DX12 at play as

Microsoft works

to level up

everyone’s

gaming

experience.

Before real-

time ray tracing

could debut in

Nvidia’s GeForce

RTX 20-series

graphics cards

(go.pcworld.

com/20gc),

Microsoft added DirectX Raytracing (go.

pcworld.com/dctx) to Windows. DirectX 12

Ultimate (go.pcworld.com/12ul) enshrines

other cutting-edge technologies (mostly Nvidia

innovations) into both Windows and the

forthcoming Xbox Series X for the good of all

gamers—including Radeon owners. Microsoft’s

forward-thinking Xbox Play Anywhere initiative

Diehard PC enthusiasts may scoff—it’s

hard to look past the epic failure of Games for

Windows Live—but hear me out.

WHY XBOX MATTERS FOR

PC GAMING

Under Phil Spencer’s stewardship, Microsoft’s

Xbox division has doubled down on PC

gaming, introducing

new features that

improve the lives of PC

gamers even if they

aren’t aware of them. A

lot of those benefits are

intrinsically tied to the

underlying DirectX 12

graphics technology

shared between

Windows 10 and Xbox,

but there’s more than

Windows 10’s Game Bar in Forza.

A recent beta made Minecraft the new gold standard for ray tracing.