Windows 7 enhances its gaming corner

There are really a lot of cool things in Windows 7 many of which aren’t always apparent at first; or even second and third glance. I’ve written about some of them over on my home blog but I wanted to share this as many folks as I could because I think what the Windows 7 team has done here is something that a lot of gamers are going to like. Not just hardcore gamers but everyone from the player of Solitaire right on up to Halo.

Back in Vista (may it quickly rest in pieces) one of the new things that was introduced was the Games Explorer; which was where you could launch and manage your built-in windows games along with PC games under the Games for Windows title. Not much overly special about that but in Windows 7 they have stepped up the game – so to speak – and added a whole slew of new functionality to it. Part of this you will notice when you fire up Games Explorer in Windows 7 and see that it is actually divided into two parts. The first part is the typical Games section and then there is one called Game Providers. This second part is the area that is utilized by the companies whose games you install on your Windows 7 system.

The idea behind this Game Providers section is that game manufacturers who take part in the program can hook in through the Games Explorer and automatically notify you of any available updates, be able to install the updates from within the Games Explorer dialog as well as any other information that might be available about the game. All these options can be enabled from within the Options areas of the Games Explorer.

One other rather cool feature is that the Games Explorer can keep track of statistics to do with the games you are playing. The statistics are tracked for the different levels for each of the games.

This is one area of the new version of Windows that I wasn’t really expecting to see any changes so it is really nice to see some serious improvements. While the whole Game Provider section is a little light at this point I hope that game developers take advantage of this new addition of services to Windows. I’m pretty sure the gamers will appreciate it.

a big hat tip to the team at the Vista Team blog.