Microsoft’s new emulator could bring more games to Windows on Arm

Microsoft is testing a big Windows on Arm update to let more x64 software and games run under Prism emulation on Copilot Plus PC with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite or X Plus processors. The capability comes as part of the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27744, rolling out to testers in the Canary Channel.

This way, Qualcomm’s new chips can run more kinds of apps that don’t have native ARM64 versions and, until now, weren’t usable with emulation. It could even enable games that use AVX2, like Starfield and Helldivers 2, to work on Windows on Arm.

With this update, Microsoft’s emulator will open up support for 64-bit x86 software to use processor extensions like AVX, AVX2, BMI, FMA, and F16C. However, it says 32-bit software still won’t be able to detect the new emulator support, so some programs still might have trouble.

While many apps, including Photoshop, Hulu, and Chrome, already have native ARM64 versions for Windows, others require emulation, and some still won’t work at all. According to Microsoft, the new emulator is already enabled “in limited use” on retail PCs, allowing Premiere Pro 25 to run on Arm — after it was initially blocked — while Adobe works on a native version.

Correction, November 6th: A previous version of the article incorrectly stated Blender needed to be emulated. It now has an ARM64 version.