On Friday Microsoft released the 18th overall build of Redstone 2, aka the Creators Update, to Windows Insiders in the Fast Ring.
It was the only build released to testers for the week and keeps in the pattern of seeing one new build each week. However, this one may have been released under some additional pressure to deliver a new build with a lot of gaming focused upates.
The reason why was this blog post from the Xbox team from earlier in the same week on Wednesday.
In that article they talked about all the great gaming related features that would be in a new Windows Insider build for the Creators Update and that it would be out the next day - Thursday.
Later that same day they had to back down those promises of a new build releasing:
"Note: This post has been updated to reflect Windows 10 Creators Update features on PC will release later this week. An earlier version of this post stated these features would release starting tomorrow, Jan. 26."
So after the tech echo chamber picked up the promise of a new build and then its subsequent delay, it is easy to see that the Windows team might have been under a little extra pressure to deliver on a new build by the end of that same week no matter what.
Personally, I am sure there was some level of coordination between the Xbox and Windows team, I mean they are both in the Windows and Devices Group at Microsoft, but it sure looks like they did not want to release Build 15019 to Insiders.
As noted in the announcement article Friday afternoon from Windows Insider lead Dona Sarkar:
"This build does have some platform related bugs that will impact the ability to play popular games on your PC. These platform bugs are unrelated to the new gaming features such as Game Mode. We recognize that this is painful for those wanting to try out the new gaming features announced this week. We deliberated a lot on whether to release this build to Insiders with these issues, however we decided to go ahead and release it as we need feedback from Insiders on other areas of the OS. The team is working hard to get these platform bugs fixed and we plan to push the new gaming features again when we release a build that includes these fixes."
Turns out this build was really rough because the series of download, install, and update issues continued with this latest build resulting in many users, myself included, waiting hours for it to finally update our test devices. Microsoft did provide a work around in a support article but as I read through social media over the weekend many were still struggling to get updated.
I know, Fast Ring builds are going to be rough but like I said earlier, I do not think this build would have seen the light of day had it not been for the tie in with the Xbox team and their earlier announcements about the builds release.
Despite all of those issues, the build is out and does deliver on several gaming related updates but also adds a few more updates to other parts of the operating system.
Among the updates provided in Build 15019:
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Built in Beam game streaming on PC
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Game Settings in Windows Settings app
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Game Mode
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Game Bar updates
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Microsoft Edge can read books and ePub documents aloud
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Full color emoji in Microsoft Edge
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Further updates to OOBE during OS install
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Blue Light renamed to Night Light
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Resizing Virtual Machine Connections in Hyper-V
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Windows Store app and game download progress in Action Center
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Troubleshooter section in Windows Settings app
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High DPI improvements for IT Pros in Windows ADK
There are 40 other improvements and fixes listed in the announcement post plus 16 known issues for PCs (there was not a release for mobile). They also added a new category of known issues around the gaming features and there are five items listed there.
Of course, this list of 61 issues is not the complete summary of what work was done in Build 15019 or what is buggy, but is intended to highlight the more visible items that users might encountered.
Take a look at this gallery to get an up close look at some of the new features included in Build 15019.
