Microsoft's Xbox Mode Is Now Available For All Windows 11 PCs

Microsoft is rolling out Xbox mode to all Windows 11 PCs, bringing a full-screen Xbox PC app interface similar to Steam's Big Picture Mode. "Some players in select markets will be able to download the Xbox mode experience today, with availability expanding to more players in those markets over the next several weeks," says the Xbox team. The Verge reports: Xbox mode aims to try and bridge the gap between Xbox consoles and Windows, but its original debut felt like a beta on the Xbox Ally devices. "Since first introducing Xbox mode, formerly known as 'full screen experience,' on Windows handhelds, we've been listening closely to player feedback and continuing to evolve the experience across devices," says the Xbox team. "Those learnings directly shaped Xbox mode on Windows 11 PCs."

Microsoft is also rolling out improvements to the Xbox Ally X handheld today, including a preview of its Auto SR upscaling technology. Xbox console owners are also getting a new dashboard update today, with the ability to disable Quick Resume on individual games and a feature to add custom colors to the dashboard.

Re: \o/

[Z00L00K]

I bought a PC, not a gaming console.

No thanks

[Snotnose]

I don't own an X Box, nor do I game on my laptop. Please don't force this on me.

Re:

[Canberra1]

As a Law Firm, one cannot tolerate any lines of code or functionality that can be used by baddies privilege escalation to expose clients or legal strategy. This is worse than braindead. Nix Recall to, still insecure.

Re:

[sg_oneill]

Oh yeah, lawyers are paranoid on that. Lawyer friend of mine had me build an AI thing that uses vector searchers to search legal cases and shit. Works well, specifically designed never to make a legal judgement (save that for humans). But it can not under any circumstances go online. So it runs a GPT-OSS model on a mac studio with 512gb ram that never ever connects to the internet. There is so much trouble a lawyer can get into if they fuck up privacy.

Make it make sense

[Gavino]

I thought the idea of the Xbox was that game devs knew exactly what platform and hardware specs they were coding for. If any Win11 PC can run xbox games now, then this is 100% broken. This seems like a way for Microsoft to kill off Xbox, without saying they killed Xbox. If I was a game dev, I'd be avoiding anything "Xbox" like the plague.

Re:

[Stormwatch]

It can't, that's just "synergy", the idea that one powerful brand can boost another. In reality it just causes confusion and incorrect assumptions.

Re:Make it make sense

[ArchieBunker]

The Xbox is already dead. This is Microsoft wanting to keep that subscriber revenue stream going.

Re:

[Narcocide]

You're probably right and one day the Xbox gaming division will just be another company that makes games for Nintendo, like Sega. From the beginning, Xbox as a product always seemed pretty redundant to Microsoft's whole business plan, and I always thought it was just a late excuse concocted to pretend that Windows's popularity wasn't simply due to the video games; recall that originally their marketing strategy to sink Commodore was to gaslight them as being inferior for business use because they were all a

Re: Make it make sense

[diffract]

They shouldn't have called it "Xbox mode" because this has nothing to do with xbox, but they wanted to pull the rug under Steam OS faster than they could come up with a proper name

There is some overlap between Xbox and Windows

[drnb]

I thought the idea of the Xbox was that game devs knew exactly what platform and hardware specs they were coding for.

Except for the GPU, the Win11 min specs may have this covered.

If any Win11 PC can run xbox games now, then this is 100% broken.

The Xbox and Windows/DirectX APIs have a lot in common. The goal was for a game to target both Xbox and Windows. Some platform specific code might be needed, it depends on the game. Some games might be able to stick to high level Win32 and DirectX abstractions and be largely portable.

I personally would not be surprised to find out that some code changes are necessary. The amount of changes varying with the game implementation.

Re: Make it make sense

[Z00L00K]

Aren't all game developers using Valve/Steam these days?

Re:

[thegarbz]

I thought the idea of the Xbox was that game devs knew exactly what platform

Xbox is a brand, not a platform. Within that brand is both a games store for PC, a games store for consoles, and a variety of console products with each console slightly different. Programming for the console has been done via an API completely compatible with Windows for well over a decade now. Targeted design hasn't existed in the xbox ecosystem since the Xbox One back in 2013, as this was essentially a PC in a box. The only platform you can do targetted optimisation for is the Playstation, and even then

Re:

[thegarbz]

*brand. Typo. As I said at the top, xbox is a brand not a platform.

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[snowshovelboy]

The endgame here is to run a streaming client in the home, and devs still get a fixed platform, but its in the cloud, and consumers don't own it, they rent it. The fullscreen xbox experience is so that they can use dark ux to channel people to the rental service, and so that they have a place to serve ads.

From Alex in Clockwork Orange:

[crunchy_one]

What you got back home, little sister, to play your fuzzy warbles on? I bet you got little save pitiful, portable picnic players.

Now that the pathetic plastic laptop your mom bought you at Costco can play XBox games, everything is just ducky, bucky.

another attempt

[Archfeld]

This is just another sad attempt at a walled garden. I play games...lots of games in a wide variety of genres. I love GOG and ITCH. I am on steam and another half dozen platforms but I rarely buy anyhting I cant download for offline cosumption. In a setup like this, you own nothing, and even mod'ing is totaly controlled by an entity well known for SUCKING.

the *ZDoom engines and modding community have given me far more game hours than ANY published game. 40oz. and the DBP folks deserve credit.

Re:

[thegarbz]

This is just another sad attempt at a walled garden.

This is nothing of the sort. This is just putting some nice bushes and a outdoor furniture in the walled garden. The garden already exists, it has for a long time. They simply added a feature to their existing store.

I am on steam

Hypocrite. Steam has precisely the feature under discussion. It's the 4th button over from the top right. It goes "Close" "Maximise" "Minimise" "Archfeld-claimed-walled-garden-mode"

XBox on PC is a great idea if done at OS level

[Somervillain]

I bought an Ally and was fortunately able to return it because it couldn't play basic games. However, I don't really enjoy using Windows. I'd rather use Linux or mac....but I like games....how about an OS that skips all the Windows bullshit and just focuses on launching games? I am sure there are many improvements and optimizations that could be made to Windows if the developers knew you were only going to play video games on it and not try to run CAD, office, art, server, or productivity software on it.

My XBox is an amazing machine...perfectly reliable, fast, pleasant to use...on some surprisingly cheap hardware. If I had 3x the power with faster CPU and GPU, I would imagine it wouldn't be THAT hard to deliver the same experience, just faster. I don't think it's restricting the hardware that makes it so great.

So yeah, if I were supreme dictator at Microsoft, I'd create a whole new XBox PC program...certification for hardware and opening up the XBox OS so that it could be run on certified PC hardware to allow hobbyists to spend their paychecks getting a mega-powered XBox....also open it to the Steam store....make a gamer's dream and keep people from leaving you for Mac/PlayStation.

Re:

[Vomitgod]

Steam Machine is coming....
https://store.steampowered.com... [steampowered.com]

Re:

[thegarbz]

I bought an Ally and was fortunately able to return it because it couldn't play basic games.

I'm curious about this, can you expand on it? I don't have one, I have a SteamDeck, but I did get a chance to have a play with one for many hours on an international flight when I swapped my SteamDeck for the flight services manager's Ally. It was full of games and all of them played quite well, including games like Cyberpunk.

What specifically does not work on the Ally? I'd like to know since I've been recommending the device to people and hope I haven't done so in error.

XBox ROG Ally + Roblox, Fortnite, Brotato

[Somervillain]

I bought the XBox ROG Ally (the white one) in Dec. I tried playing Brotato and Hades 2 as well as Fortnite and Roblox with my kids. I prefer to play docked, but also tried handheld. It bricked itself twice. I had to lookup the hard reset procedure. Fortnite runs on a Switch (1, not even 2)...but it became a painful slideshow if anything happened on the ally x, both handheld and docked. Brotato also runs GREAT on a switch, docked, at highest difficulty levels. It's a very simple game...but also was ve

This is not that

[HalAtWork]

This is a mode that limits what is loaded for the desktop, saving about 2GB of RAM, and gives about 1-2 fps improvement. It's the same thing that has been on the Xbox ASUS ROG Ally handhelds and has been available to install and benchmark on the desktop since the end of 2025 [windowsforum.com].

No win11. Uh uh,

[maynard]

I just installed Fedora 44 on my old Win10 laptop. Because Microsoft made sure this perfectly good laptop with 16gb RAM could not run Win11. And Affinity Suite runs great on wine now. And no obnoxious telemetry tracking. Oh yeah, for games: steam and lutris too.

Yeah yeah yeah, linux linux linux

still, Microsoft is in self-destruct mode.

The Verge is a terrible source

[sosume]

That Verge source as enshittified itself bigly with their subscription overlay, anti-scroll javascript, and nagging. If they can't operate a site without these dark patterns, they don't deserve any visitors at all. They must have run out of VC money because it all went to AI.

Re:

[GrahamJ]

A paywall isn't enshitification. Verge is a good site worth supporting; pick up a (cheap) sub and you won't have those issues.

Exactly what we need

[Slashythenkilly]

Windows is already bloatware but no no....