Windows on Arm is now ready to play thanks to some big changes

Last year, Qualcomm promised that gaming would “only work” on Snapdragon Away from the issue. Now, a year later, Windows on Arm is even more ready for gaming, thanks to emulator improvements, driver updates, a new Snapdragon control panel, and Qualcomm’s work on anti-cheat compatibility.

Qualcomm releases it Snapdragon control panel This week, which automatically detects the games you have installed on your Snapdragon X Elite laptop and then optimizes them. It’s very similar to the apps AMD and Nvidia use for their GPUs, with settings for maximum frame rate, anti-aliasing, texture filtering, and more.

The Snapdragon control panel also allows you to install the latest Adreno GPU drivers, which are optimized for the latest games to improve stability and performance. Qualcomm says it has made fixes and improvements to more than 100 games since launch last year, with ongoing bug fixes for stability and performance.

Along with the release of the Snapdragon control panel, Microsoft and Qualcomm have also made some important changes to help PC gaming on Windows on Arm. The Microsoft Prism Emulator now supports x86 Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX), which are required by many games and creative applications. Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon X2 Elite chipset also supports AVX2 emulation, and existing Snapdragon X series devices will also receive the update in the coming weeks.

Microsoft also updated its Xbox app on Windows on Arm recently to add Ability to download ARM64 compatible games. When Copilot Plus PC launched last year, the Xbox app was just a gateway to Xbox Cloud Gaming. It didn’t have Library or Store options, so you couldn’t use it to install games from PC Game Pass. That’s all changed now.

Qualcomm is also working with Epic Games to acquire… fortnite Runs on Windows on ARMwith full anti-cheat support at the kernel level. You’ll need the latest Adreno GPU driver to get it fortnite Run, and Qualcomm says It’s also working with other anti-cheat providers like Tencent’s Anti-Cheat Expert, Roblox’s Hyperion, Denuvo, InProtect GameGuard, Uncheater, and BattleEye to enable more multiplayer gaming on Windows on Arm.

All of these improvements are a much better start to gaming on Windows on Arm than what launched last year, but performance and compatibility are still far from perfect. You can check to see if your favorite game is running locally, via emulation, or not at all here.