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During a livestream that aired today, Microsoft officially unveiled its next OS: Windows 11 and announced that Windows 10 users will get access to Windows 11 as a free upgrade, similar to how Windows 7 and 8 users were upgraded to Windows 10 for free.

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Microsoft also said that Windows 11 will be "the best Windows ever for gaming". To back that claim up, the tech giant announced a slate of gaming-related enhancements. One of these is Auto HDR which will make games look better as it adds High Dynamic Range (HDR) enhancements to titles built on DirectX 11 or higher that previously only leveraged Standard Dynamic Range (SDR). This tech was in fact introduced Xbox Series X|S consoles.

Another enhancement will come to loading speed through the new DirectStorage technology. This was part of the Xbox Velocity Architecture featured in the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S and Windows 11 PCs will load new games faster with a high performance NVMe SSD and the proper drivers.

As a final gaming-related feature, the Xbox app will be built into Windows 11 to provide easier access to Game Pass. Cloud gaming will also be directly added into the Xbox app on PC.

Another interesting announcement during the event, albeit not directly related to gaming, is that Android apps will apparently run natively on Windows 11. The apps will be downloadable from Amazon’s Appstore, which will itself be accessible via the new Windows store.

For more details about the gaming-related announcements, head to the official Xbox blog post in the source link below.

SOURCE

 

[MorningBlunt]

Neat! But if it's free, why not just make it a Windows 10 upgrade?

They make money from licencing and OEMs. They can't make any money by having it as Windows 10.
BUT they can make Samsung, Dell, HP etc. pay for 11 under a new dealio.

 

[tech3475]

I wonder how much that TPM requirement will be a problem for MS and customers? I just had to manually enable AMD fTPM in UEFI to pass the requirement check.

People that got the free upgrade from windows 7, will they upgrade for free again?

I'd presume so, IIRC XDA had an article on the leaked build where apparently it can accept W7/8 keys.

Although system requirements, especially TPM 2.0, could be an issue.

 

[Something whatever]

Oh SUPER not worth it

 

[Julie_Pilgrim]

Don't need this. I'll be sticking to Windows 98 for gaming, thank you very much!

LMAOOOO IMAGINE USING A OS WITH A UI

sent from linux recovery shell

 

[Lacius]

People that got the free upgrade from windows 7, will they upgrade for free again?

If a computer meets the system requirements and is already on Windows 10, yes, you will get the Windows 11 upgrade for free.

 

[NeSchn]

This is pretty neat but I'll stick with 10 for now. Last thing I need is for Windows 11 to not work with Pro Tools or any of my plugin's so I'll wait. Excited to check it out eventually though!

 

[Uiaad]

People that got the free upgrade from windows 7, will they upgrade for free again?

Yes you will, even if you upgraded to 10 from 7 you will be able to upgrade to 11

Not sure why. Something to with TPM or secure boot apparently.

Yeah at the moment Windows 11 does require TPM 2.0 and Secure boot enabled. It's unclear if this is just a temporary thing with the "insider builds" and will vanish nearer the Fall 10 Release/upgrade path - A lot of motherboard support TPM but just lack the module

I've never got the whole Windows 10 hate train that a lot of people jumped aboard, I can sort of understand the hate toward 8/8.1 Microsoft gambled on touch devices being the next in thing and it just didn't work out when it came to the PC/Laptop market generally but with 10 they took a step back and actually looked at the market and what people wanted. A lot of people will bang on about Telemetry, collecting data and sending data - Cortana etc etc etc but there are simple scripts you can run that will disable all of that. Should it be more transparent? yes. But at the end of the day, people don't seem to question the same data being sent to google or apple from their phones.

And as far as updates screwing over gaming performance - it's quite simple when you look at the Mac ecosystem they have to develop for a standardised handful (or less and we all know Macs are the thing for gaming right ? ) of system where you have a near impossible to calculate the number of systems in the wild for windows and it's down to the number of people who are on the insider builds there just aren't enough people there using and actively engaging in the system

 

[jt_1258]

ok...listen...I hate to be that person joining along in just saying oh boo, already bad...but when your trailer has glitches I am already concerned...there is a blinking area in the bottom right ish at the end for no apparent reason

 

[ciaomao]

think what they said/meant was "Windows 10 will be the last OS you buy."

If you put it that way, win 7 would have been our "last" OS, right?

 

[Lacius]

If you put it that way, win 7 would have been our "last" OS, right?

Considering the free upgrade offer, yeah, but that was officially only supposed to last a year. Their point was that once you have Windows 10 on a machine, it should be supported for life without having to buy another OS.

 

[Jayro]

The TPM 2.0 requirement is likely going to shut out a lot of PCs that don't have it at all, or don't have it enabled by default. The PC I have from 2014 doesn't support it, therefore it is stuck to Windows 10. It can be bypassed for now but who knows if that will still be possible in the future?

Also there are some other "interesting" changes such as removing the possibility of moving the taskbar from the bottom. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifications

The site where I got my windows 11 ISO had a "TPM 2.0 fixed" ISO, and that's what I grabbed for MediCat VHD. Zero issues installing it to bare metal. So I'm sure more people will patch out that requirement on their own.

 

[nightweb]

The Bit that got me was Under System requirements it has "Windows 11 Home edition requires internet connectivity and a Microsoft account to complete device setup on first use."

Nooooope

 

[Jayro]

The Bit that got me was Under System requirements it has "Windows 11 Home edition requires internet connectivity and a Microsoft account to complete device setup on first use."

Nooooope

Give it time, users will patch that out too. You can also set windows 11 to force the setup of an offline account using NTLite, so not all hope is lost.

 

[Lacius]

The Bit that got me was Under System requirements it has "Windows 11 Home edition requires internet connectivity and a Microsoft account to complete device setup on first use."

Nooooope

Give it time, users will patch that out too. You can also set windows 11 to force the setup of an offline account using NTLite, so not all hope is lost.

Or better yet, use one of the methods out there to upgrade to a Windows 10 Pro account before updating to Windows 11.

 

[nightweb]

Give it time, users will patch that out too. You can also set windows 11 to force the setup of an offline account using NTLite, so not all hope is lost.

Probably will but for the non-techy's and OEM buyers who don't know better...

 

[MarkDarkness]

Will they leave me alone and not swarm me to update to one of their crap half-step releases... I have memories from war of being forced into Window 8, that's enough for a lifetime, and this looks the absolutely same thing.

 

[CloudStrife1901]

It's definitely made my 2016 laptop run alot faster. Windows 10 made it super slow

 

[Jayro]

Or better yet, use one of the methods out there to upgrade to a Windows 10 Pro account before updating to Windows 11.

Yeah, you can get a Pro license for just a few bucks on eBay.

 

[ghjfdtg]

Something, something "Windows 10 is the last Windows". I guess they had to milk OEMs and consumers again on top of them already milking consumers with ads and private data.

 

[Jayro]

Something, something "Windows 10 is the last Windows". I guess they had to milk OEMs and consumers again on top of them already milking consumers with ads and private data.

They already make a killing selling our private data, so they should just give windows away for free.