Microsoft Surface and Windows head Panos Panay revealed something surprising about fan requests that the company make a gaming focused Surface tablet or PC. Bluntly, they aren’t interested.
Here are Panos’ comments when asked directly about making a Surface device in an interview for the Surface 2022 event:
“Here’s what I’ll say. Our gaming customers on Windows are amazing, in like, what we want now on from the Windows side is to make sure we’re doing things, like Direct storage or DX12, or just the elements so that you can just build the gaming rig. So you know, like we’re now in this world of, how do we make sure we’re giving the gamers their best experience? So I don’t think it’s about Surface hardware? Actually, I just you know we have incredible OEMs right now that, what they’re delivering, you know? Whether it’s Legion, or Omen, or Alienware, like Razer, these products are phenomenal.”
Given that it’s now the ten year anniversary of the Surface, Microsoft would have put their hardware vision through the ringer. In fact, Panos revealed that the idea with the Surface was not just to compete with the iPad. He had a vision for a tablet, a laptop, and a PC, to uplift the entire Windows ecosystem. Even the product’s critics would have to concede that, whether they have a personal interest in these products or not, Microsoft has succeeded in carving out their niche of the market. If they hadn’t ‘defeated’ Apple with market dominance, they still proved the philosophical point that they could also make stylish, elegant hardware like Apple, and even more important to Microsoft, that they could prod the OEMs to move towards the direction that they want to see. And so, we now see a host of Microsoft tablets, convertibles, and 2-in-1 devices from different OEMs, all attempting to outdo what Microsoft does. Whether they succeed to do this or not in consumer’s minds, Microsoft has already won, because their OEMs will never be complacent again.
But getting back to a gaming Surface. It’s quite interesting that Panos shifts gears from being the head of the Microsoft Surface hardware department, to the head of the Windows OS department. Gaming was clearly not a part of Panos’ original vision at all. While that could definitely change at some point in the future (Microsoft did eventually give in on adding Thunderbolt ports to their devices), in the near future we shouldn’t expect them to be producing anything to places gamers.
FWIW, their new Surface Studio 2 Plus would actually be a great gaming PC, albeit overpriced if that’s the only reason you would be getting it. This is an all-in-one PC with a large and heavy pen input display, that can be turned around in wide and broad angles thanks to its unique dock. This PC has Intel’s 11th Gen Core H i7 quad core processor, paired with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060.
The screen would be overkill but not undesirable for a gamer. 13 and a half million pixels and over a billion colors come in a 28 inch monitor with 4K resolution. Paired with that is Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. Microsoft also leverages this screen to utilize a four window display view, which means users can have 4 14 inch 4K screens all at the same time.
Now, the Surface Studio 2 Plus is actually made for creatives, including digital painters, 3D artists, and video producers. Another way of looking at it is it’s a device that could be used to help make games. But if people were looking for a Surface device optimized to play video games, intentionally or not, this is it.
Now, if you’re looking for a tablet, that’s optimized for gaming, what you want is ASUS’s ROG Flow Z13. That’s an incredible tablet that not only has a RTX 3050 paired to Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs and a dedicated MUX Switch for high end gaming, it also has the cooling solutions required (in this case, vapor chamber cooling with liquid metal combined with 0dB ambient cooling) so you can achieve peak performance on such a form factor. Microsoft didn’t have to make this device themselves, as the high interest in gamers would guarantee one of their OEMs would try it, and possibly do it better.
So maybe there is something to Panos’ conviction not to have the Surface division make a gaming tablet, or any Microsoft gaming focused hardware. Microsoft is doing enough on their Windows side to enable OEMs to make those devices, and those OEMs would have a bigger interest in making those devices than Microsoft anyway.
Source: The Verge via YouTube
