Windows 10 Creators Update: Store games with drivers

Microsoft announced yesterday that the upcoming Windows 10 Creators Update will support the delivery of game drivers with Store games.

Commercial Windows Store games have a tarnished reputation; not only because of time-exclusive or fully exclusive game listings, but also because Store games lack support for certain features that "regular" PC games support.

A basic example of why you may not want to buy the Windows Store version of a game is the following: it is Windows 10 exclusive then. If you have another gaming PC with Windows 7, then you cannot install it on that PC.

Not all is bad though, as you get cross-play options for some games (Xbox One and PC for the most part), which can be useful as you have to buy a game once only to play it on both platforms.

Driver issues and Microsoft's fix

Games released on Windows Store may have certain requirements when it comes to graphics support. They may require a certain version of DirectX for instance, or a certain driver version.

Major games may also go hand in hand with special video card driver releases that improve a game's performance when the driver is installed.

Microsoft ran into driver issues with the company's own Forza Horizon 3 game which did not run overly well on systems with outdated drivers.

The current way that users get new display drivers for their PCs is somewhat problematic. While companies may offer automatic driver updates or at least inform users about updates if software like GeForce Experience is installed (which in itself users may not want), the main way of getting new drivers is to visit the manufacturer's website, check for driver updates, download those, and install those on the machine.

Microsoft wants to improve the process by delivering video card drivers with games. The company has not revealed much about the new feature. According to the information, a game purchase will trigger a download from Windows Update of the minimum graphics drivers required to play the game on the device.

Only stable, WHCK drivers will be downloaded this way.

Alarm Bells go off

That sounds good on first glance. If a machine does not have the minimum graphics driver required to play the game, then it will be downloaded automatically to the system.

The main question that I have is whether customers will be prompted for that, or if the installation will commence without customer input.

There are good reasons not to install certain drivers on a machine. If customers are prompted and informed, all is good and well in my opinion. If that is not the case, then this could become quite the issue.

You can watch the full winHec 2016 session below. The short bit about delivering game drivers with Store game purchases starts around 10:25.

Now you: What's your take on the new feature?