Despite some AI missteps, Microsoft's new lineup of Copilot+ PCs have been some of the best laptops. They are great Macbook Air alternatives, with the longest laptop battery life we've ever tested and stunning, powerful performance.
However, one area they all continue to struggle in is PC gaming, backed up by a new report from The Wall Street Journal.
It all comes down to compatibility. While powerful, the Arm-based Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus chips don't work with many top video games, like Fortnite, which are built on top of Intel's x86 architecture.
The x86 chip architecture has been a standard for decades, with WSJ saying that approximately 15 percent of laptop owners are gamers. Microsoft designed software called Prism, which enables x86-based apps to run on Arm-based Windows computers. It has not worked well.
The Wall Street Journal tested over 1300 Copilot+ PCs and found that most struggled when attempting to run x86-based PC games.
In June, when the Copilot+ PCs launched, we saw examples of x86-based programs struggling as the Adobe suite didn't have a native version to run on the PCs. Premiere Pro was barely usable and has yet to see a native release, with Adobe claiming it would come out "later this year." Samsung released a list of all the apps that wouldn't be compatible with their new Galaxy Book 4 Edge laptop.
It may not entirely be the game itself that is struggling to run, but the anti-cheat software that comes with many multiplayer games these days. The anti-cheat software is often not Arm-compatible and makes the game unplayable.
Microsoft told the WSJ that "players who want a high-performance native gaming experience may choose an alternate PC optimized for gaming.” Qualcomm said that the Copilot+ PCs are not a "gaming platform" but is working on improving the situation.
Both companies claimed they were working on the situation but declined to provide a timeline for a fix. However, Microsoft may abandon that plan soon.
For those who are interested in gaming on a Copilot+ PC, you won't have to wait much longer. AMD released the Ryzen 300 AI CPUs in July and will get an update to make it Copilot compatible in November. Intel's new Lunar Lake chipsets are launching in September, and Intel promises "unmatched AI computing power."
