In some ways, the Surface product range is a little stale. That is why next week's Surface Event 2022 is barely making a blip on most people's radars. Sure, we will get to see a Surface Pro 9 (likely with an Arm variant) but we also know it will be an incremental bump on last year's model. What people want is a new product to grab the imagination… such as a Surface Gaming Laptop.
Just a few years ago, Microsoft's gaming division (led by Xbox) seemed to be in tatters. Sales against the PS4 were poor and they appeared to be losing interest. Thanks to the rise of cloud technology, Microsoft now sees gaming and Xbox as the lynchpin of its consumer efforts.
With Xbox Cloud Gaming and Xbox Game Pass important services for the company, the idea of a Surface Gaming laptop seems more legit. Microsoft has the PC gaming market cornered in terms of platform, with Windows the dominant gaming OS. Instead of letting OEMs have all the fun, it is obvious that Microsoft should want to bring its Surface brand to the gaming party.
Specs
According to The Prime Gaming, Microsoft is preparing to do just that. The outlet has posted reported specifications for the upcoming gamified Surface. That spec sheet points to an Intel Alder Lake H Core i7-12800H and Core i5-12500H being the CPUs that will drive two variants of the new laptop.
It will also boast a dedicated graphics card, with the i5 model pairing with Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3050 Ti 4GB GPU and the i7 model using a RTX 3070 Ti 8GB GPU. Other notable specs include 16GB (i5) or 32GB (i7) of LPDDR4x RAM, storage up to 2TB (SSD), and a 16-inch 1440p PixelSense Flow screen. Furthermore, the device will run Windows 11 with Microsoft's DirectStorage API.
Hopefully, Microsoft launches the Surface Gaming Laptop to add spice to the Surface Event 2022.
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