At Windows 8 launch, these 40 games will be ready to go
Angry Birds, Minesweeper, Wordament, and 37 other casual games will be available on October 26, the day Microsoft makes Windows 8 commercially available.
Microsoft's Xbox team has gone public with a list of 40 casual games that will be available on Windows 8 starting the first day the operating system is commercially available.
As of October 26, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Minesweeper, Wordament and other games will be part of the first wave of such titles available to Windows 8 users, according to an August 31 post on the "Windows Experience" blog. Twenty-nine of the listed titles are from Microsoft Studios.
"Xbox is also announcing support from Rovio, Miniclip, Gameloft, ZeptoLab, Glu Mobile, Halfbrick Studios who are also bringing Xbox games to Windows 8 in this first wave. Ongoing new releases will of course be available through the holiday and beyond," according to today's post.
These games will be available through the Windows Store and be discoverable through the Windows 8 Games app. These games will offer Xbox Achievements, along with "the ability to take advantage of certain Xbox features such as leaderboards, multiplayer modes, and connecting with friends," the post added.
A number of these games have been available to Windows 8 testers for months already. It sounds like at least some of those games also will be adapted to work on Windows RT -- the version of Windows that runs on ARM-based devices -- if they haven't already.
Reaction from those on Twitter ranged from calling this an excellent list, to a less-than-impressive one. I'm not a gamer, even a casual gamer, really, so I don't have an opinion. Any games listed there you consider must-haves or ones not listed that you're hoping come later to Windows 8?
This story originally appeared at ZDNet under the headline "Microsoft goes public with list of 40 casual games coming to Windows 8."