Gears of War 4 coming to Windows 10 in October with improved graphics and cross-play support

It’s confirmed: Gears of War 4 will come to Windows 10 in October, and will be part of the Xbox Play Anywhere program. This means that when you buy the game digitally, you’ll be able to play it on both your Xbox One console and Windows 10 PC, with your progress and achievements saved through Xbox Live and then shared across both platforms at no additional costs.

The Xbox One release date for this game is scheduled for October 11, with Microsoft confirming that Gears of Wars will be “released on both platforms.” Since the game will enter the Xbox Play Anywhere program, it’s safe to say it will land on Windows 10 at the same time although Microsoft hasn’t clearly confirmed this.

Microsoft made this announcement at E3, confirming the rumors from March this year, and added that Gears of War 4 would be exclusively released on the Xbox One and Windows 10. Moreover, the tech giant also confirmed that every game mode would support cross-platform play.

Microsoft has visibly improved the franchise’s graphics, resulting in major improvements in lighting and texture quality. Overall details are better as more elements are visible in the background and you can see many environment nuances as you look around. To boast about these changes, Microsoft presented amazing gameplay footage to the E3 audience, teasing them ahead of the October 11 official launch.

The footage begins with a gory scene, then switches the focus to the commando team searching shelter on a harsh winter day. Excellent face and gear details are visible as the team prepares for more war. The colors of the game are well balanced and long-range alien killing scenes are combined with moments when dead aliens travel in the air towards you.

With Gears of War 4, Microsoft decided to stick to the old recipe. The new game will have similar gameplay elements as previous ones and will be powered by Unreal Engine 4 for high-quality graphics. Gears of War 4 is set 25 years after Gears of War 3 and its main characters will be Marcus Fenix’s son, JD Fenix, and two other characters: Kait and Del. The entire game spans the course of just 24 hours.

As happy as Windows 10 gamers are to hear that Gears of War 4 will be on PC, we can’t help but wonder why Microsoft is limiting the game to the Windows 10 platform. Windows 10 is indeed the most popular OS among Steam gamers and gained a 2% market share over the last two months, but there are many Windows 7 and Windows 8.x players interested in purchasing the game.

Could this limitation be part of Microsoft’s strategy to convince Windows users to accept to upgrade to Windows 10? If this is the case, then Microsoft is consciously limiting its game revenue since Windows 10 has a market share of only 17.43%.

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