By Joel Loynds,Paul McNally

Copyright escapistmagazine

Braver PC users than I have taken the plunge and unlocked Microsoft’s new Windows 11 “Xbox Mode”. Announced alongside the new ROG Xbox Ally handhelds, it shuts off processes and software that operate in the background to give you a more console-like experience in the Xbox app. It wasn’t one hundred percent sure if Microsoft would bring it to all PCs, but it seems that trying to individually manage sects of Windows isn’t worth the hassle. Instead, it’s currently available in the Release Preview channel of Windows 11, 25H2, and then also go tinkering with the Windows registry. Someone on Reddit has written a succinct guide on how to do it. Minor improvements with new Xbox Mode on Windows That someone is claiming to see a “5% improvement” in Red Dead Redemption 2, which is a whopping 35 frames per second to 37 FPS. However, on the hardware of the handhelds, where every ounce counts, this should lead to improvements elsewhere. As British supermarket Tesco says, “every little helps.” There are also some touchscreen shortcuts, with swiping up from the bottom allowing for ALT-TAB switching, and from the right to left will bring up the Xbox menu. My main takeaway here isn’t to do with the gaming stuff, but how Windows is changing thanks to the handheld space. In the settings, there’s now a “Full screen experience” page, which lets you mimic what Valve did with SteamOS, but on Windows. Rather than boot into a desktop environment, which even on the Steam Deck can be a faff to get around, Microsoft will now let you boot into the new mode from startup. Source: Gogsi123 via Reddit The screenshot posted to Reddit seems to show that you can choose which app to boot into at launch. If someone could figure out how to get Steam Big Picture or other launchers to work properly through that, that’d be great. Everything old is new again on Windows In a way, it’s just circling back to Windows 8, really, isn’t it? If you aren’t chronically operating system-brained and actually skipped Windows 8 and 8.1 like sane humans, you will have missed the Metro UI. It was also on Windows Phone 7, and was genuinely a real smart user interface. Nice big, minimal styled blocks that a fat finger could prod at on any size screen to launch stuff. You know, instead of mega tiny icons that still need to be double-clicked, infuriating me every time I use one of these Windows handhelds. I’ve spent nearly four years of my life saying that we needed something like Metro UI for Windows handhelds, and now Microsoft has bitten the bullet, sort of. Beware of the Windows update, Xbox users Of course, if you’re remotely curious, you’ll want to tread lightly. Windows updates in recent times have been a little shaky, which isn’t what you want to hear from the mega corporation. However, it seems like the consequences of laying off their quality assurance team ten years ago are finally biting them on the ass, as one of its last updates began breaking some SSDs. Mileage will vary, and all that.