Windows Dev Home is Extensible for Game Development

This week, we are releasing the Microsoft Game Dev Extension Preview to demonstrate the Extensions feature with examples of how you can customize the Windows Dev Home experience for game developers.

March 20, 2024

In 2023, Windows Dev Home was released as a preview for all developers (Download | Read the Docs).  It introduced a Dashboard user interface to run developer Widgets, Machine Configuration features to provision local machines or cloud-hosted VMs with WinGet packages, and teased an area for Extensions to enable community-driven customizations.

In 2024, during the week of GDC we are releasing the Microsoft Game Dev Extension Preview – made by Team Xbox – to demonstrate the Extensions feature with examples of how you can customize the Windows Dev Home experience for a specialized audience, such as game developers.

We made this extension as a first step to solve for our game developer audience the types of problems we see every day: 

  • Developers need to save time finding and installing software, especially those with dependencies or specific versions to match your game dev environment.
  • Developers need to spend less time looking for tools hidden or scattered on their PCs.
  • Developers need quicker ways to glance at critical information during development and make common tasks quickly and easily repeatable.

Here’s a quick tour of how to see these first couple of Extension features:

On any Windows 11 system with Dev Home installed, install the Microsoft Game Development Extension Preview (Download). 

(note: Windows Dev Home for Windows 10 builds will be available soon).

We have included an example for how the Featured Applications list can improve the discoverability of your WinGet packages advertised in the “Install Applications” UI. 

Using the Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) as an example, compare how quickly you can install the GDK here vs. downloading and installing manually.

Our sample Widget (GDK App Launcher) shows how tools installed on the system can be easier to find, wrap, or extend into the Dev Home Dashboard. 

Windows Dev Home supports multiple languages.  Japanese (ja-JP) is the first language supported by the Microsoft Game Dev Extension Preview. 

While Team Xbox will be using the Microsoft Game Dev Extension Preview to showcase real tools to improve quality of life for developers using the Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) to build PC games for the Microsoft Store on Windows, the important takeaway is that Windows Dev Home is open source and available to anyone to use!  There are even more Windows Dev Home features for game developers on the way!

Give us Feedback!  Follow us via Windows Dev Home GitHub, join in on Feature Explorations, or reach out to us on the Microsoft Game Dev Discord channel (https://discord.gg/msftgamedev).