Getting Started with Windows 8 - Releasing HTML5 Games for Windows 8 - page 3

well as the new form factors and input devices released along with the new OS. Here is a
quick rundown of the typical types of devices your game could run on:
▪ Desktop - This is a standard PC. It is usually a tower and a freestanding monitor, or an
“all-in-one” computer. Typically these have powerful video cards, fast CPUs, lots of
RAM, and a keyboard as the default input device.
▪ Laptop (Non-touchscreen) - This is your standard laptop. Any laptop that ran Windows
7 should run Windows 8, but there are a few things to keep in mind with these older
devices. Laptops usually have slower GPUs/CPUs, less RAM, and have a track pad plus
a keyboard as the default input devices.
▪ Laptop (Touchscreen) - Most if not all new Windows 8 laptops are coming out with
touchscreens. Windows 8 is a “touch-first” OS, so these new ultra-thin, touch-enabled
laptops will work great with Windows 8 out of the box. Plus, the extra touchscreen al-
lows you to do basic touch testing for your game. If you are in the market for new hard-
ware for doing Windows 8 development, I highly suggest making sure your next laptop
has a built-in touchscreen.
▪ Convertible - This is a new category of ultra-portables that are tablets that can dock
with a keyboard to become a laptop. These offer all the same conveniences of a tablet
and laptop at the same time. They have touchscreens as their primary input and usually
have very low-powered CPUs with built-in GPUs. These also come in two flavors: Win-
dows 8 and Windows RT, which I will talk about in the next section.
▪ Tablet - Windows 8 was designed to run amazingly on a tablet. These are similar to the
convertibles but may not have any way to dock with a keyboard to become a “clamshell”
form factor. The flagship of these types of devices would be Microsoft's Surface. Tablets
offer lots of options for input from touch to pen, even accelerometer, and can also be
connected to a traditional mouse, keyboard, or game controller as well.
This quick overview of the Windows 8 device landscape can help inform you on some of the
complexities that may arise when trying to get a game to run on all these different devices
with multiple types of input. Over the course of the topic, I'll dig into some of these special
use cases and work through solutions to help make developing HTML5 games for Windows
8 as straightforward as possible.