TheRetroArcade
Veteran
Posts: 2,013
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
Not the Windows game mode it needs
I regret to announce that I have a theory. It involves handheld PCs, Project Helix – Microsoft’s next, PC game-running Xbox console – and least likely of all, an apparently sincere attempt at making Windows 11 less of a bulging, AI-infested colostomy bag. That attempt is better known as Xbox Full Screen Experience, and now that it’s finding its way onto portables outside the MS-branded Asus ROG Xbox Ally series (plus big-lad PCs as well), I’m convinced that it was introduced at least in part to test the waters of how a Windows PC/console hybrid could operate.
Upon its reveal last year, of course, Xbox FSE looked like it was merely addressing a very specific Windows 11 issue: that it was rubbish for handhelds. Its PC game compatibility outmatched what the Linux-based SteamOS could afford Steam Decks, but devices like the original ROG Ally and the Lenovo Legion Go still chafed under the lack of small-screen optimisation, an interface roundly unsuited to gamepad-style inputs, and absent sense of when the OS should back off its advertising schtick. No, I would not like to install Office 365 on my dinky games machine, thank you awfully.
FSE, as it did on the ROG Xbox Allies and is now doing on the Lenovo Legion Go 2, smooths out all three. Mostly. Like SteamOS – or just Steam’s Big Picture mode – it boots not into the usual Windows 11 desktop, but a chunky, griddy view that puts your games front and centre. It’s designed throughout for controller inputs and on-screen keyboards, and as long as you’re in it, a host of Windows’ background processes and default startup apps are suspended, freeing up RAM and processor headspace for games.
On a basic, 'Is this preferable to stock Win11' level, Xbox FSE is successful. It’s immediately better suited to gamepads and handhelds, and in addition to its disabling of non-gaming bloat, it exhibits little of the whining that Windows 11 unleashes when you try to venture beyond the Microsoft ecosystem. Y’know how it falls to its knees and begs you not change your default browser away from Edge? None of that in FSE: it even includes download widgets for Steam, GOG Galaxy, the Epic Games Store and the like, never interrupting their installation to plead the case of the Microsoft Store.
Now, there’s Project Helix. Newly installed Xbox chief Asha Sharma says it’s a console that plays PC games, the intimation being that it is is not a PC that plays console games. I’d contend that there’s no difference: existing consoles are already based on the same underlying GPU and CPU tech as desktops, laptops, and handheld PCs, and Xboxes specifically have long ran operating systems spun off from Windows. Nonetheless, Microsoft can’t just bung a copy of Windows 11 Home into Project Helix, or it would suffer the same affliction as those early handhelds: a desktop OS shoved where a desktop OS don’t fit.
It still needs something more flexible than a purely locked-down console OS, but that something should also streamline and gamepaddify the installation and launching of Windows games. It should more effectively scale itself to different screen sizes than Windows does. It should combine multiple and disparate game libraries into one. It should, in the minds of Sharma and co., have the word "Xbox" plastered all over it. It should, in other words, be something like Full Screen Experience.
Again, probably not the exact same thing, unless Microsoft fancy doing a mad one and literally making Project Helix a Windows 11 PC. But FSE is just too a fit to ignore. And besides, what better place to sneakily dry-run a key feature of the next Xbox than the quiet niche of handhelds?
That, then, is my theory, and if I’m on the money to any greater extent than gently brushing a 1p piece, Xbox FSE bears closer examination. Sadly, this serves to remind us that even though it’s an improvement on bog-standard Windows, it still comes up short as a dedicated games platform.
In fairness, all th...Read more: Full article on www.rockpapershotgun.com
What do you think about this?
I regret to announce that I have a theory. It involves handheld PCs, Project Helix – Microsoft’s next, PC game-running Xbox console – and least likely of all, an apparently sincere attempt at making Windows 11 less of a bulging, AI-infested colostomy bag. That attempt is better known as Xbox Full Screen Experience, and now that it’s finding its way onto portables outside the MS-branded Asus ROG Xbox Ally series (plus big-lad PCs as well), I’m convinced that it was introduced at least in part to test the waters of how a Windows PC/console hybrid could operate.
Upon its reveal last year, of course, Xbox FSE looked like it was merely addressing a very specific Windows 11 issue: that it was rubbish for handhelds. Its PC game compatibility outmatched what the Linux-based SteamOS could afford Steam Decks, but devices like the original ROG Ally and the Lenovo Legion Go still chafed under the lack of small-screen optimisation, an interface roundly unsuited to gamepad-style inputs, and absent sense of when the OS should back off its advertising schtick. No, I would not like to install Office 365 on my dinky games machine, thank you awfully.
FSE, as it did on the ROG Xbox Allies and is now doing on the Lenovo Legion Go 2, smooths out all three. Mostly. Like SteamOS – or just Steam’s Big Picture mode – it boots not into the usual Windows 11 desktop, but a chunky, griddy view that puts your games front and centre. It’s designed throughout for controller inputs and on-screen keyboards, and as long as you’re in it, a host of Windows’ background processes and default startup apps are suspended, freeing up RAM and processor headspace for games.
On a basic, 'Is this preferable to stock Win11' level, Xbox FSE is successful. It’s immediately better suited to gamepads and handhelds, and in addition to its disabling of non-gaming bloat, it exhibits little of the whining that Windows 11 unleashes when you try to venture beyond the Microsoft ecosystem. Y’know how it falls to its knees and begs you not change your default browser away from Edge? None of that in FSE: it even includes download widgets for Steam, GOG Galaxy, the Epic Games Store and the like, never interrupting their installation to plead the case of the Microsoft Store.
Now, there’s Project Helix. Newly installed Xbox chief Asha Sharma says it’s a console that plays PC games, the intimation being that it is is not a PC that plays console games. I’d contend that there’s no difference: existing consoles are already based on the same underlying GPU and CPU tech as desktops, laptops, and handheld PCs, and Xboxes specifically have long ran operating systems spun off from Windows. Nonetheless, Microsoft can’t just bung a copy of Windows 11 Home into Project Helix, or it would suffer the same affliction as those early handhelds: a desktop OS shoved where a desktop OS don’t fit.
It still needs something more flexible than a purely locked-down console OS, but that something should also streamline and gamepaddify the installation and launching of Windows games. It should more effectively scale itself to different screen sizes than Windows does. It should combine multiple and disparate game libraries into one. It should, in the minds of Sharma and co., have the word "Xbox" plastered all over it. It should, in other words, be something like Full Screen Experience.
Again, probably not the exact same thing, unless Microsoft fancy doing a mad one and literally making Project Helix a Windows 11 PC. But FSE is just too a fit to ignore. And besides, what better place to sneakily dry-run a key feature of the next Xbox than the quiet niche of handhelds?
That, then, is my theory, and if I’m on the money to any greater extent than gently brushing a 1p piece, Xbox FSE bears closer examination. Sadly, this serves to remind us that even though it’s an improvement on bog-standard Windows, it still comes up short as a dedicated games platform.
In fairness, all th...Read more: Full article on www.rockpapershotgun.com
What do you think about this?