Microsoft’s ROG Xbox Ally reveal didn’t just show off the hardware but also gave us a sneak peek of the software powering the Xbox-branded handheld. By the looks of it, Windows is finally going mouse and keyboard-free, but there’s much more to this than meets the eye and it’s all thanks to Valve and SteamOS.
Windows Is Anything but Optimized for Gaming
If you’re a PC gamer like myself, you’ve probably become used to the usual Windows shenanigans that mar the gaming experience.
Annoying updates, a bucket’s worth of bloatware that gets installed along with Windows, certain Windows settings that have an adverse effect on gaming performance being enabled by default, and the utter impossibility of navigating Windows with a controller when you want to game on your TV are just some of the offenders.
PC gamers have been dealing with these issues for decades now, as Windows has been and remains the default operating system for PC gamers. However, thanks to Valve and SteamOS, as well as other gaming-centric Linux distributions like Bazzite, Microsoft can no longer ignore Windows’ gaming deficiencies.
SteamOS has shown that you can have a lean, intuitive, and smooth-performing gaming-first operating system that doesn’t need a keyboard or mouse. But the ease of use is just the tip of the iceberg. Now that we have devices such as the Lenovo Legion Go S, which come in Windows and SteamOS flavors, we can see just how bloated and inefficient Windows is.
- Dimensions
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0.89×5.02×11.77in (22.6 x 127.55 x 299mm)
- Playing Time
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1-5hrs
If you’re looking for a Windows-powered gaming handheld with great ergonomics, the Lenovo Legion Go S is an ultra-comfortable model with an entry-level chipset.
Dave2D recently compared the two Lenovo Legion Go S versions, which are identical apart from the software powering them. The results show that games, in general, run smoother and often faster on SteamOS than on Windows, despite SteamOS using the Proton translation layer to run these games.
In other words, games run better via a translation layer on Linux than they do natively on Windows, which should be unacceptable but somehow is par for the course for Windows. Not only that, but the SteamOS version of the Legion Go S also boasts longer battery life, no forced updates, and a convenient sleep mode that allows you to put the handheld away and then pick it up and continue gaming where you left off in a second.
Valve lit a fire under Microsoft and Windows with SteamOS. While Microsoft was silent for a good minute, the company is starting to share details about its Windows gaming vision, and if I’m being honest, I like what I see.
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Windows Goes Game Mode
Ever since Valve debuted its overhauled version of SteamOS, which powers the Steam Deck and is now also compatible with most Windows PC handhelds, we’ve been waiting for Microsoft to respond.
Up until now, the Redmond giant’s retorts were the usual corpo speak about “marrying Xbox and Windows” to create a better gaming experience for Windows gamers, but the company’s actions were kind of disappointing. Aside from some updates to the Xbox Game Bar and the addition of a compact mode to the Xbox PC app, we received nothing of substance.
With the official reveal of the ROG Xbox Ally X and Xbox ROG Ally, this changed. Microsoft has given us a glimpse of a new Windows UI explicitly designed for controllers, and it looks promising.
Firstly, forget about the Windows desktop. The ROG Xbox Ally handhelds boot directly into a full-screen Xbox-like UI that’s optimized for controllers. This is a stripped-down version of Windows that lets you do everything with a controller. You can sign into your Microsoft account, enter your PIN on the welcome screen, tweak settings, and even multitask.
The Xbox app serves as a unified game hub and launcher. It lists all the games you have installed on your machine, be they PC Game Pass titles, Steam games, or games you got for free from the Epic Games Store. You can access them all from a single, unified dashboard, removing the need to constantly juggle between half a dozen game launchers.
That said, you can still use other game launchers, such as Steam in its Big Picture mode; you aren’t limited to the Xbox App.
The Xbox Game Bar finally makes sense as part of this setup. Instead of being nigh-unusable, it hosts software such as ASUS Armoury Crate, allows you to adjust options such as volume and brightness, monitor in-game performance metrics, and more. In a nutshell, the Game Bar plays the role of the Quick Access menu on the Steam Deck, which sounds great.
Together, the Xbox app and the Game Bar create a controller-first interface not dissimilar to the Xbox dashboard and very similar to Game mode on SteamOS.
If you want the classic Windows experience, you can summon the desktop with a press of a button and then navigate it using thumbsticks or a mouse and keyboard. In a nutshell, this handheld Windows experience is quite similar to SteamOS, offering a Steam Deck-like Game mode and the classic Windows desktop mode we are all accustomed to using.
- Dimensions
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11.02 x 4.37 x 1.08 inches
- Brand
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ASUS
The ASUS ROG Ally X (2024) is a handheld gaming PC designed to take your favorite titles on-the-go. With the AMD Z1 Extreme processor and 24GB of RAM, you’ll find that the ROG Ally X packs a punch in the power department. It’s capable of playing games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 at over 100 FPS using recommended settings. USB4 and USB-C allow the ROG Ally X to be converted to a desktop through a USB dock, making it even more versatile.
Changes to Windows Go Beyond the Surface
Now, updating the Windows UI to treat controllers as first-class citizens is all nice and dandy, but Windows gaming issues extend beyond the user interface. Microsoft is also tweaking Windows under the hood to better optimize it for gaming.
Aside from a pretty face, the gaming-first version of Windows should also shed a solid amount of overhead that gobbles up resources and results in games running slower on Windows than on SteamOS via Proton. This should also lead to better battery life, another bane of Windows handhelds.
The upcoming Windows “Xbox mode” ditches bloatware and copious amounts of overhead in favor of a trimmed-down experience that only includes the necessary stuff. No OneDrive, no bloatware, no Copilot and Recall, no gazillion background processes. This version of Windows travels light and packs only the necessities needed for a comfortable gaming experience.
As of this writing, developers working on the project have managed to win back about 2GB of memory used by the operating system, freeing up those resources for games. They are confident they can free up even more memory and even a chunk of CPU resources used to handle all those Windows background processes.
Adding sleep mode to Windows is another area of focus. The lack of it is one of the biggest advantages SteamOS has over Windows, especially when it comes to PC handhelds. If Microsoft manages to bring to Windows something similar to Quick Resume from Xbox consoles, it would be a massive win and a huge step in achieving feature parity with SteamOS.
Best of all, while the two Xbox ROG Ally handhelds are the first to feature this version of Windows, Microsoft will make it available for other Windows handhelds sometime next year, according to the Verge. My hope is that, ultimately, the Windows “Xbox mode” will also land on Windows-based laptops and desktop PCs.
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I’ve Never Been as Excited About Windows as I Am Right Now
Microsoft’s vision where every screen is an Xbox won’t work without a massive Windows overhaul that will bring the OS closer to SteamOS and Xbox’s own console dashboard.
By the looks of it, the Xbox team currently working on making the Windows gaming experience more akin to the SteamOS experience knows what they’re doing. After all, the Xbox OS is based on Windows, just stripped of all the stuff that gets in the way of gaming.
That’s what this massive update to Windows is shaping up to be: a lightweight, gaming-first version of Windows that ditches the decades-old desktop interface in favor of a controller-only UI that’s not limited in any shape or form in case you don’t own a mouse and keyboard.
I’ve got to say, I’m pretty excited about this. While I find the overall SteamOS experience pretty solid on my ROG Ally after installing some Decky Loader plugins, the possibility of having a SteamOS-like UI on the handheld but fully compatible with PC Game Pass, third-party game stores, and every multiplayer game sounds even better.
While the short-term focus is making Windows less of a pain to use on PC handhelds, the scope of the project is much broader. Remember, Microsoft plans to open up the next-gen Xbox to third-party game stores such as Steam, and the console (or consoles) might run the same or a very similar version of Windows found on the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds.
This means we should ultimately get a flavor of Windows we can use from the comfort of the couch with only a controller in hand. While handheld PC gamers are the first to profit, the new gaming-first Windows interface will be great for anyone who has their PC hooked to their TV or who prefers gaming on their desktop or laptop with a controller.
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If all goes according to plan, the Windows gaming overhaul should be a proper game-changer for PC gaming. Finally, Windows is set to match the usability of SteamOS and Bazzite, break its ancient desktop shackles, and adopt a console-like interface that will turn it into a perfect environment not only for the next-gen Xbox, but also for every gaming PC where games are played mostly with a controller. Man, I love competition.
