Gaming Is Gonna Suck a Whole Lot Less on Copilot+ PCs

There could be a sea change coming for many of the touted Qualcomm Snapdragon-based Copilot+ PCs Microsoft helped launch over a year ago. Took them long enough. Many of the early Copilot+ devices sport a chip that left many legacy apps—and essentially your entire PC game library—in the wind. Microsoft is finally pushing an emulator update to get all those apps up and running. I hate to be that guy, but Microsoft should have looked to Apple’s first transition to its M-series chips if it wanted a smoother shift to the supposed ARM promised land.

Last year, Microsoft and Qualcomm rode into their big AI hardware push on a horse made of ARM-based Copilot+ PCs. The first of these devices made use of a Snapdragon X series chip, promising better battery life and AI performance compared to the CPUs then available from both Intel and AMD. The only issue was, these were ARM-based chips, which have a completely different chip microarchitecture compared to what’s in use by Intel and AMD. Microsoft promised it had worked with a multitude of major software companies like Adobe to enforce ARM compatibility going forward.

Well, it may be making good on that original proclamation more than a year later. This month, Microsoft stealth dropped a new update that could finally offer some relief to the legion of gamers and legacy app users marooned on Windows on Snapdragon Island. As detailed in a report by Windows Latest, the update may finally let users emulate capabilities that were only found on non-ARM chips. Specifically, it’s the AVX and AVX2 extensions to the x86 instruction set. What the hell does any of that mean? It stands for Advanced Vector Extensions, which is how x86 chips perform multiple processes at once. This is how video encoders and physics engines in games operate on most modern chipsets. Enabling AVX and AVX2 may involve digging through each app’s properties to manually turn them on. In reality, we’ll probably have to wait until Microsoft details how the emulation, called Prism, will work seamlessly for games, likely with a new laptop launch next year.

Why’d it take you so long, Microsoft?

I have not yet had the opportunity to test the new Windows 25H2 update on ARM (specifically patch KB5066835). Windows Latest claimed the patch allowed them to get most games to launch and run, though how well they may perform will further depend on the title. Microsoft may not be making a bigger stink about this patch, as it’s waiting for a bigger launch of the next slate of Snapdragon X2 laptops to arrive early next year. Qualcomm told Gizmodo last month its push for gaming compatibility was “moving slower than we want.†However, the company’s chief of mobile and compute, Alex Katouzian, reiterated Qualcomm was sticking with Microsoft’s Prism for its compatibility or emulation technology.

Snapdragon devices can still make use of a multitude of regularly used apps—of course including Microsoft’s own 365 suite. That includes most of Adobe Creative Cloud. However, many consumers who bought these PCs had little idea what they were getting into. Some consumers were at a loss when their legacy apps or drivers were not compatible with their new Windows 11 PC. The most obvious culprit was games. The situation grew increasingly awkward when devices like Microsoft’s Snapdragon-based Surface Laptop 7 appeared on Amazon as a “frequently returned item.â€

Apple had a cleaner transition to ARM

Compare all this hubbub to Apple’s efforts five years ago. In 2020, the company declared it would start on a two-year journey to transition from Intel-based chips to its own ARM-based M-series silicon. Apple introduced the Rosetta 2 compatibility layer as part of macOS Big Sur. This allowed a majority of Intel-centric apps to run on the M1 chip. Users didn’t have to do anything special. In typical Apple fashion, many things “just worked,†though how well depended on the program and whether it was running natively. If Microsoft had taken the same tack and offered a more refined compatibility layer from the start, we may have had an ARM-on-PC renaissance. Instead, Intel is gearing up for its next x86 debut, Panther Lake, and it already appears very promising for gaming.

This year, at WWDC 2025, Apple declared it would finally stick Rosetta 2 into the grave with macOS 28 in 2027. At that point, there may still be a number of legacy apps that will simply break on Apple’s latest machines. That’s the price of progress, I guess.