Microsoft Rolls Out Xbox Full Screen Experience To All Windows 11 Handhelds
If you've been paying attention, though, you may notice that this feature was technically already available for other handhelds. While true, this required access to the Windows Insider Program and knowingly toggling the feature, whereas now the update will has dropped for all handhelds as a stable feature.
Others (outside of the handheld landscape) hoping to experiment with it will still need to opt into the Windows Insider Program manually, though, and the exact wording says "to more Windows 11 PC form factors," not to all Windows 11 PCs. Hopefully that doesn't mean Microsoft will be arbitrarily limiting the feature to just handhelds, HTPCs, and the like—it would be ideal if anyone who wants to plug in a controller and use Windows like this is allowed to. We shall see.
For those who aren't familiar with the Xbox Full Screen Experience on Windows, it does serve as a controller-forward manner to navigate the operating system and play games, but it has some key limitations. In order to achieve its full functionality (no glitches, full performance), you have to (re)launch the system to go straight into FSE. Doing this prevents the desktop environment and normal startup programs from being loaded, which can save on some memory usage and marginally boost performance in RAM or VRAM-constrained (often both for a handheld) titles. The performance changes we documented in our benchmarks were fairly marginal with the exception of F1 24, which saw a massive gain in minimum frame rates thanks to the freed-up memory bandwidth.
Besides the stable rollout of Xbox FSE to non-Xbox PC handhelds, the Xbox Partner Preview for November 2025 largely showcases upcoming games coming to Xbox and PC platforms. Highlights include 007 First Light, a James Bond game from Hitman series developers IO Interactive, and Reanimal from Little Nightmares developer Tarsier Studios. Any larger-scale teases or announcements will have to wait until The Game Awards starts on December 11th.
Image Credit: Microsoft
