Two handhelds with a new full-screen experience for Microsoft’s gaming platform, the Xbox Ally

The Xbox Ally Device: An Updated Launcher for All PC Games on Full Screen TVs and Implications for the Handheld Experience

This updated Xbox app will now work as a launcher for all your PC games, but you’ll still be able to interact with Windows apps and those other launchers freely in this full-screen handheld experience. Microsoft is working with leading storefronts to make it easier for everyone to play PC games on full screen TVs, Sones writes.

Roanne Sones said that the device that galvanized those teams and got everybody working towards a moment that we were excited to put into the hands of players.

If you exit the full-screen mode, you can launch the full version of the Windows desktop, but it will be hidden. “We’ve reduced many notifications and pop-ups, and we will continue to listen to feedback from players to make continued improvements,” says Sones.

Microsoft doesn’t load the full Windows desktop or a bunch of background processes in this full-screen Xbox experience, putting Windows firmly in the background and freeing up more memory for games. Instead, you launch straight into the Xbox PC app, which includes all of your PC games from the Microsoft Store, Battle.net, and what Microsoft calls “other leading storefronts.”

“We’ve made a lot of improvements to Game Bar over the last year, and really it was driving towards this device,” says Brianna Potvin, principal software engineering lead at Xbox. The Game Bar interface can be found on the Xbox Ally devices if you press the button a short time. If you long press on the Xbox button then you’ll even get a more handheld-friendly task switcher, which lets you alt+tab between apps and games using the controller.

I will have to try this new interface and get a feel of the Windows changes here, but Microsoft is hopeful that I will like it. “This isn’t surface-level changes, we’ve made significant improvements,” says Potvin. “Some of our early testing with the components we’ve turned off in Windows, we get about 2GB of memory going back to the games while running in the full-screen experience.”

The sleep situation where Windows-powered devices draw too much battery life when they’re not on is a feedback point for the handheld experience.

Microsoft and Asus announce two Xbox Ally handhelds with new windows full-screen experience: Why you need a controller? And how to get the game on your Xbox

You will be able to see all of your Steam games on any PC, thanks to Microsoft, which says the aggregated gaming library within Xbox on PC will be available.

The Xbox Ally X has the same impulse triggering that all modern Xbox controllers do, so you will feel like you’re on a road in a game or hit by a bullet in a shoot out. Asus is also using a USB-C 4 connector that supports Thunderbolt 4 on the more powerful Xbox Ally X, offering the possibility of connecting a powerful external GPU to it, alongside a single USB-C 3.2 port and a UHS-II microSD card reader. The Microsoft Ally has two USB-C ports instead of the traditional one.

Shawn Yen, the vice president of consumer at Asus, admits that they cannot do this alone and that some people have found it “frustrating and confusing” to use Windows with the assistance of a controller.

The idea is that you should be able to seamlessly launch any game you own, whether it’s actually installed on your handheld, streaming from your Xbox Series X over home Wi-Fi, or streaming from the cloud, though we have yet to try that ourselves.

These two devices have similar grips to the one on the Xbox. It resembles the way Sony did with its console, putting a screen between the grips of the controller. The grips have been designed so that you can access the controls by wrapping your hands around them.

Source: Microsoft and Asus announce two Xbox Ally handhelds with new Xbox full-screen experience

Energy and Efficiency: The Challenge of the Next Generation of High-performance Compact Devices,” AMD General Manager Yen told CNET

“For this generation the most important thing to us is efficiency. Efficiency is our new superpower,” says Yen. “The games will be able to play cooler and quieter, and at the same time offer you a longer battery life for gameplay.” AMD told us in January that the Z2 Extreme would be both its most powerful and most efficient handheld chip yet, while the Z2 A is rumored to be based on the Steam Deck’s less powerful but battery-sipping Van Gogh-based chip.