JUNE 2020 PCWorld 21lets you buy a
game once, then
play it on PCs or
consoles, and it’s
been bolstered by
the company’s
impressive
support of cross-
play features.
Xbox Games Pass
for PC (go.
pcworld.com/
pass) is the best
value in gaming
today, offering
over 100 games
for $5 per month. Even the Windows 10 Game
Bar kicks ass (go.pcworld.com/10br) now.
To pave the road for the Xbox Series X’s
ray-tracing support, a recent beta made
Minecraft the new gold standard (see page
67) for ray tracing. Seriously: It’s stunning.
Xbox isn’t just for the living room
anymore. It’s the brand for all of Microsoft’s
gaming endeavors, uniting PCs and consoles
alike. But sadly, Microsoft’s most innovative
gaming technology isn’t emphasized in the
recent Surface releases, even though some
could be used as gaming devices.
SURFACE BOOK 3 GETS RAY
TRACING, KIND OF
The Surface Book 3 announced in May (go.
pcworld.com/msb3) looks like a serious
improvement to an already glorious hybrid.
We dubbed the Surface Book 2 “the ultimate
laptop” (go.pcworld.com/b2rv) in our 2017
review. This version ups the ante with Intel’s
latest 10th-gen processors, modern Nvidia
GPUs, massive storage and memory
upgrades, and even a more potent power
brick to sidestep the energy-draw woes that
served as the one glaring drawback in the
last model. We haven’t reviewed it yet, but
on paper, it looks like everything we
could’ve asked for in an update.
But on the proverbial eve of seeing the
Xbox Series X bring real-time ray tracing into
the mainstream, the consumer-focused
versions of the Surface Book 3 don’t support
real-time ray tracing.
There are a lot of available Surface Book 3Microsoft’s Surface Book 3 can game, but it isn’t focused on gaming.