Porting a game from x86 Windows to ARM Windows may take some effort, but for most games, nowhere near as much as porting to a different operating system. There just isn’t that much assembly code or even SIMD intrinsic use in your average game. And thanks to Microsoft’s Arm64EC ABI, the conversion from x86 to ARM can be done piecemeal. If, say, the game depends on some proprietary third-party library that isn’t willing to offer an ARM version, that library can be run in emulation while the rest of the game is compiled natively for ARM.
The AAA game world is very conservative, so I can’t guarantee that PC game developers will port their codebases to ARM. It really depends on the size of the audience and how well the x86 emulator works as a substitute. Even if ARM takes over on Windows laptops, I’m not sure laptops are enough, when laptop users are already accustomed to not being able to run AAA games well.
But if the audience gets large enough, it’s hard to believe that developers won’t try recompiling. It’s just not the same level of effort as a port to Mac or Linux.
> The AAA game world is very conservative, so I can’t guarantee that PC game developers will port their codebases to ARM.
Unreal, Unity, CryEngine and Godot all support ARM, so - testing and third-party binary libraries aside - there shouldn't be any reason to not have an ARM port.
The AAA game world is very conservative, so I can’t guarantee that PC game developers will port their codebases to ARM. It really depends on the size of the audience and how well the x86 emulator works as a substitute. Even if ARM takes over on Windows laptops, I’m not sure laptops are enough, when laptop users are already accustomed to not being able to run AAA games well.
But if the audience gets large enough, it’s hard to believe that developers won’t try recompiling. It’s just not the same level of effort as a port to Mac or Linux.