No, but they can do things like not optimize code paths and not work with Intel on power saving features. The average consumer is far more likely to buy a Windows laptop with an arm cpu than an Intel laptop running a different os. Intel won't win that fight unless it's in a court room.

Even if the arm laptops are 20% cheaper Intel will start feeling the heat.

It could cut support for the highest end x86 CPU's in desktop machines (ie. non-server). That would then make those CPU's un-sellable, since they're pretty much all used for gaming.

Obviously, they wouldn't say that - the way to market that is to release 'Windows Gamers edition', which costs way more and 'unlocks' the power in the latest CPU's. When in fact, non 'game edition' windows versions simply leave some cores disabled or sleep some of the time when they detect a 'too fast' CPU and a fullscreen game running...

At some point I'd like to believe people would just stop paying Microsoft tax to play computer games...

Then I remember people pay tons of cash for their rigs that are obsolete within two years anyway.

Seems like a lucrative practice for Microsoft and one they should embrace, extend and extinguish.

> At some point I'd like to believe people would just stop paying Microsoft tax to play computer games...

I wish I could. The games I like aren't released anywhere else.

> Then I remember people pay tons of cash for their rigs that are obsolete within two years anyway.

This is false. A moderate gaming PC can last longer than a console. I used my previous rig for 4 years and now my wife is using it perfectly fine. It still has better visual fidelity than a console.

The only viable alternative is consoles.

Expensive gaming rigs - a bit less so than PC, but for equivalent hardware, about $400 cheaper at introduction, about equal once 1-2 years pass.

Obsolete in 2 years - check

Expensive software - much more so for consoles.

So right now the situation is that if you go for PC gaming instead of console, you'll have about the same expense, but 100 games for PC (and a powerful general purpose computer), and maybe 5-10 on console.

Plus you can upgrade parts of your PC during its lifetime, without having to replace the whole thing at once.

My GPU lasted me 5 years and then it broke. I now play games like Warframe on iGPU at 720p on the lowest settings.

It actually works quite well.

I dunno if Microsoft could get away with something that extreme without (again) running afoul of anti-trust issues.