about F***ing time!
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/microsoft-confirms-game-mode-for-windows-10-that-i/1100-6446936/

Please, this is just another way of selling the controls you should already have back to you. Besides, the settings this game mode adjusts can probably be adjusted manually already.

Don't fall for this, this is like those gimmicky performance enhancement software claiming to get 50% boost and whatever. It can't boost beyond what your hardware is capable of.

It will not limited to UWP/Windows Store, so I am fine with it.

yes game mode was promised as far back as Vista

Yes hardware is always king but you can indeed get better performance (especially in wx witch is heavy in the back end) by turning off or tweaking software and the point of game mode is that not every one knows how to adjust their system themselves and shouldn't have to

p.s, Games are big business and Microsoft has ignored that fact for years so we remain both hopeful and perhaps a little suspicious

The only reason MS cares now is because the Xbone crashed and burned compared to the PS4 and Windows needs more than just happen to run most games. Also they still seem to be chasing the dream of unification between console and PC with their shitty store and 2nd hand exclusives.

As to the feature itself, it must be questioned first if they're disabling us from manually adjusting and forcing us to use their own software or whether they're intentionally gimping windows without it so people use it. Given how they pushed auto downloads without user-control in Windows 10 (and continue to do so), those wouldn't be too far off.

What does that mean in practise? I thought DirectX 12 alone was already supposed to give some kind of lower lever access to PC hardware, boosting speed. Is this something on top of that, and what exactly?

Also since it is a big company (MS, Google, Facebook, you name it).... there must be some hidden agenda. They don't do things like this just to benefit their customers anymore, they always mean to achieve some targets of their own with them, be it data collection, concentrating the market more around their own store, etc. etc. etc. Yes yes it says it supports Win32 games too, but let's see through what kind of hoops they make people to go through first, in order to run Win32 games in the "gaming mode".

So I am cynical for now, but let's see when it appears. I was actually hoping more for some kind of backwards-compatibilty gaming mode which would make lots of old Windows games fully compatible with Windows 10, without having to use some DirectDraw hacks or whatever.

This is not even close to that in scale. This is most likely going to be like antivurs game modes that try to increase framerate by reducing background processes and freeing up RAM.

An Wine for Windows 10?

Considering with win 10 you can barely change anything at the moment, I don't expect this to do anything other than fill out the already bloated system, likely with adware and more links to their garbage store. I mean, can I remove cortana, the cloud stuff, or store from my install, nope.

You could just install another OS and shut up?

Yes, you can. It's not as easy as clicking a button, and you do need to get the proper utilities to do so, but it is quite possible to remove them.
dism and install_wim_tweak are your friends. Just be sure to read the documentation before using them.

well dunno ^^ - had no negative performance impact compared to win7/8 so not really sure if the game mode will yield any performance gains on okish systems with enough ram. Most likely only will help on system which have not enough ram to begin with

It's most likely something that will pause, lower priority, of background process, disable notification popup, etc... Well they are mainly a software company so the big hidden agenda is most likely having peoples buying/using licenses of their software.

If you have the home edition, with the Pro you just need to use the Local Policy Editor.

I thought the Policy Editor would just disable it, not remove it. But yes, depending on what you need, Policy Editor is another option.

Isn't game mode just a glorified task manager and little else at this point?

Of course, I don't even have a Microsoft account on my Windows 10 install, so there's that too.