---
title: 'Gaming on Windows Just Changed Forever'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=cZ-saJoTl3M'
video_id: 'cZ-saJoTl3M'
date: 2026-07-28
duration_sec: 1163
---

# Gaming on Windows Just Changed Forever

> Source: [Gaming on Windows Just Changed Forever](https://youtube.com/watch?v=cZ-saJoTl3M)

## Summary

Microsoft has introduced Xbox mode for Windows, a toggle that strips away bloat for a console-like gaming experience. While it offers seamless game library consolidation and controller navigation, performance tests show no gains over standard Windows, and the experience remains buggy.

### Key Points

- **Xbox Mode Introduction** [0:00] — Microsoft launched Xbox mode for Windows, a lean gaming interface that toggles to remove bloat and focus on gaming, inspired by Valve's Linux contributions.
- **Console-like Experience** [2:01] — Xbox mode provides a console-like UI with controller navigation, including PIN entry via D-pad and consolidated game libraries from multiple stores.
- **Seamless? No** [10:14] — The experience is not seamless; bugs include broken home/back buttons, keyboard pop-up issues, and occasional unrecoverable states.
- **Startup Time Savings** [11:00] — Booting directly into Xbox mode saves about 7 seconds of startup time and reduces memory usage by killing the desktop UI on idle.
- **No Performance Gains** [12:00] — Benchmarks in Forza Horizon 5, F1 24, Doom: The Dark Ages, and Cyberpunk 2077 show no performance benefit over standard Windows, with occasional issues like window focusing problems.
- **Long-term Goal** [14:04] — Xbox mode is part of Microsoft's push for platform unification, aiming to treat PC gamers as first-class citizens and improve game availability across platforms.
- **System vs App Level** [15:25] — Xbox mode replaces the Windows shell, unlike Steam Big Picture which runs as an app on top of Windows, but currently uses more RAM when playing Steam games.
- **Half-baked but Promising** [16:42] — Xbox mode is half-baked today, but Microsoft is trending toward better platform unification. For now, Steam Big Picture is cleaner and recommended.

### Conclusion

Xbox mode is a promising but half-baked feature that offers no performance gains and has usability bugs. It represents a step toward platform unification, but users are better off with Steam Big Picture for now.

## Transcript

25 years ago, Microsoft teamed up with
Dwayne the Rock Johnson to announce the
Xbox. And it was a powerhouse with a
Pentium 3 processor and cuttingedge
GeForce graphics alongside a lean, mean,
slimmed down Windows-based operating
system that helped to push that hardware
to its absolute limit. Which got
everybody asking, why can't Windows be
like that on my computer? And that was
back then when Windows RAM usage idled
in the megabytes. Now you're lucky if
you can get it under four gigs. And for
what? Even the venerable start menu is
morphed into a bloated Reactbased web
app. So what? I can bing search my file
names. Hell no.
>> The good news is this seems to be
changing. Thanks in no small part to the
incredible contributions that Valve has
made to Linux PC gaming. They have done
what no one else could and forced
Microsoft to finally address the
elephant in the room. And to Microsoft's
credit, they've done it with Windows
Xbox mode, a lean, mean toggle that you
can just flip to strip away the bloat
and just focus on gaming. You don't even
need a keyboard and mouse anymore to
navigate. It's all controller all the
time, baby. At least in theory. In
practice, Xbox mode might not be quite
all it's cracked up to be. So before you
fire it up and take a look, why don't we
go through it together and have a look
at the labs testing that our team did to
see just how much bloat they managed to
remove. One bit of bloat they couldn't
remove is this segue to our sponsor
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Performance aside, a key benefit of Xbox
mode is the ability to get a
console-like experience in a device that
we already own. So, why don't we see how
seamless it really is? Starting by
signing in, which um this is not
actually what I was expecting. Oh, okay.
We need to use a pin. There we go. Okay.
With the pin. Yeah, this is pretty cool.
So, there's bindings for your D-pad,
your shoulder buttons, and your face
buttons so that you can quickly enter
your PIN with a controller. Freaking
love to see it. And we're in Oh man,
it's good to see that logo again.
Obviously, not everyone wants to be
launched straight into a gaming
interface, but if you do, it's as simple
as toggling your system to launch
directly into Xbox mode. I've actually
been using this for a while on my
battery modded ROG Ally, and it's really
nice how much stuff you can do now
directly with your controller rather
than relying on a keyboard and mouse.
That's not to say that you can do
everything. And in fact, apparently
they've put together some challenges for
me. Uh, are you going to give me the
keyboard in case I fail?
>> You're going to have to get the keyboard
yourself. It's on that shelf up there if
you can reach it. But if you touch it,
you fail. Up here, I got my settings
where I can manage my subscriptions cuz
they really want you doing that. This is
nice. This is where you manage your
library. This is probably one of the
best things about the Xbox experience. I
know it's been done a hundred times in
the past, but this is probably the most
seamless that I've seen all of my
multiple game libraries just
automatically consolidated. First thing
they want me to do is adjust system
volume. Well,
all I said was I didn't have to touch
the keyboard. Normally, I would I would
have my, you know, system remote. So, I
think I won. Okay. All right. All right.
I'll try not cheating. I have to admit,
I've never tried to do this. My Ally
just has volume buttons on it. So, uh
Okay. Uh audio. I mean,
I can see the point you're trying to
make. That does seem like a fairly
straightforward thing, but also I can
see why it's not built in because in
almost no situation where I'm using a
full screen experience would I
necessarily need to adjust the volume.
Then again, Steam Big Picture can do it.
So,
>> is there a way to do it? Am I just
missing?
>> There is a way to do it. Did they pull
an Apple? Did they pull an Apple? Change
system settings. Oh, yeah, buddy. Oh
yeah, buddy. Let's go. This is not the
way. That's not the way that we
expected, but that works. This is
apparently this is not the way. Okay. Is
it in the game bar? I bet it's in the
game bar. Audio. Boom. Boom. There it
is. It's in the game bar. Found not one
but two ways. Accessibility and the game
bar. I got to confess that even in the
Xbox experience, the game bar remains
one of those aspects of using Windows
that I just find high friction with. All
right. Now, I got to connect to a Wi-Fi
network. Yeah. Once again, I guess it's
going to want me to use the Game Bar for
this. Oh yeah, buddy. Oh yeah, buddy.
Okay, get it together, Microsoft. This
This can't be a thing when I got this.
I'm not touching it, though. I'm going
to get close,
but I'm not touching it. Can't see what
I'm doing here. Oh man. Where the
devil's the O. Okay, here. What if I
click it? Okay, there. Yeah, let's go.
A Yeah, buddy. Next challenge. Try
running hardware info.
>> I'm going to assume that I can like add
it as a game.
Let's go. We'll play the hell out of
that game.
Okay. Was that something you guys were
expecting?
>> Yes.
>> Oh, more options. Edit. Oh. Oh. Okay.
Mhm. Okay. Close.
No, I do not want file picker. Close
there. Okay. All right. I cut out of
that without touching the keyboard.
Okay. I saw a thing here. More options.
Edit. This is an app. Okay.
Yes.
Okay, that's fine. That's fine. Close.
Okay. Uh,
and this is possible, right?
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. It's possible. Apparently,
Microsoft is adding a joystick to mouse
thing, but it hasn't rolled out to
everybody. I don't know what version of
this they installed. Is there like a
hardware info widget or something?
Remember
this is a game.
What does that mean?
Gamepad cursor. Oh, there it is. Oh,
sick. Oh, we're flying now. But now I
can do anything. I mean, yeah, that
should work.
Uh, I don't know. Say, do you mean to
count?
Is this really not going to work? The
request is not supported.
>> There's a way to do it inside of Xbox
mode.
>> There's a way to do it inside of Xbox
mode. Bring up a keyboard, you butt. Do
I really have to turn off gamepad cursor
in order to get a keyboard? Stupid.
Well, HW info is not in here. Um. Oh
man. Let me cook. Let me cook. Oh, hold
on. Wait. What is this? I mean, sure.
Let's try that. Okay, I'm installing it.
Sure. I'll install it better than you
guys did. And then it will open. Launch
hardware info. Here we go. Yes.
Let's go.
Hardware info launched. All right. Next
challenge. Openltd store.com. Well, this
is going to be too easy now. Oh, shut
up. Not a big fan of how I don't get a
keyboard when I have this enabled, but
this is still in beta. I'm sure they're
figuring that out. Well, here's a clunky
way to do it.
Boom. And was that how you expected me
to do it?
>> Honestly, no. Your solution was pretty
different from everything that Labs has
done to uh solve these.
>> Now, let's stop doing challenges and
let's see how seamless it is launching a
game. Starting with Cyberpunk. This is a
Steam game. Clearly, I think you guys
just saw it launch. And this is kind of
a worst case scenario because it's got
like a third party launcher thing and
and Steam and the Xbox experience that
you have to kind of fight your way
through. I can also see that they
helpfully reset it back to the initial
launch experience where you have to like
dismiss various pop-ups and whatnot. But
here we are. Oh, come on. Boom.
We're in. Consider your main frame
hacked. All right. All right, I got one
more challenge. Try enabling the game
bar performance overlay. Bonus point
options.
Options. Okay, here's all the metrics
and everything.
Microsoft honest bit of feedback. The
world does not need more iPhone like
experiences. Let's let back just be
back. Not goodbye everything. Home
button is home button. Back button is
back button. Okay, this is interesting.
Well,
okay. I've never seen it break like this
before. Shoot. I may have entered an
unreoverable state here. I can't believe
I'm going to lose. Going for the bonus
point. Okay, hold on. No, no, hold on.
No, I don't want to pin YouTube to the
taskbar. Not now, Windows. This is
exactly what people are using Xbox mode
to avoid Microsoft.
Ah, hold on. No, I just need to get my
mouse back. If I can get my mouse back,
I'm good to go.
Oh, I got my cursor. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Apparently, I was on the right path when
I did this. Like, it's got to be here.
Oh, not this again. For crying out loud.
We're in the performance widget. Hello.
Come on. Okay, so it's pinned. It's
compact. Yeah. And like
>> reopen Cyberpunk.
>> Reopen it. Wait, what the what the crap?
That's the way to That's crazy. So, if I
pin it and I have that, then it will
work. It should just work. That's crazy.
You know what? It doesn't matter. I
think at this point we've done enough to
talk about the overall experience.
Seamless?
No.
Somewhat intuitive?
Actually, other than the bugs, I would
say they're mostly on the right path for
the third time. Now, promise this is the
last time I'm going to mention it. They
need to fix home and back functionality
to be a clear home and back experience
within the Xbox app. Other than that,
bringing up the Xbox app interface,
overall pretty navigable. They do have
to get some functionality from the
non-compact mode baked into compact, but
in most of these cases, I can really see
where they're going with it. Keyboard
pop-ups do need to be usable when you're
using the cursor. Okay, there is quite a
lot that needs to be addressed. But on
the bright side, booting directly into
Xbox mode saved us about 7 seconds of
startup time. And we also found that by
killing the desktop UI on idle, we're
saving some memory compared to running
standard full-blown Windows with the
Xbox app on top of it. Now, let's see if
there's anything to gain while gaming.
Under my desk are two systems. The one
on the left is running Xbox mode, and
the one on the right is using Steam Big
Picture mode on top of regular old
Windows 11. We're using Fortza Horizon 5
because we wanted a very mature native
Game Pass game to give Xbox mode its
best possible shot. Both of our systems
are running a 9600X paired with a 560Ti
and 16 gigs of RAM. So, these are
exactly the kinds of mid-range but
modern systems where we might expect
some gains. Let's fire it up, shall we?
Or both are running their own overlays,
so we can't really compare these. But
what we can compare is the results page
at the end. So, one moment please. And
they're the same. Or rather, they're not
the same. But as we've talked about in
the past, even if you buy the exact same
hardware these days, because of dynamic
frequency scaling, one system can
perform a little different from another.
And this one is about 3% faster than
this one. So, it's a wash, which is a
little disappointing to be honest with
you. We can actually prove this. By the
way, now everything's running in the
background. Here we can run it. We can
run it one more time. Now it's running
full fat Windows. And there you go. Not
what we were hoping for, but hey, maybe
it's different on some of the other
titles that Labs tested. Spoiler, maybe
it's not. The Labs team tested at both
1080p and 1440p resolutions. And
starting with F124 at ultra high preset
with RT and VRS disabled.
Yeah, my my thoughts exactly. we once
again see no performance gains. And
making matters worse, in exchange for
this big fat zero performance gain, labs
noticed occasional issues, including
window focusing problems and even
instances where F1 refused to boot in
full screen mode at all. And
unfortunately, Doom: The Dark Ages went
no better. On medium presets with no
upscaling, we found no performance
benefit between Xbox mode and the
standard experience within the Abyssal
Forest benchmark. A result that was
repeated yet again in Cyberpunk 2077 at
the ultra preset with no upscaling and
rate tracing off. Making matters
worseer, as you may have noticed earlier
when red launcher popped up, Cyberpunk
isn't native to Game Pass and you
actually need to use mouse emulation to
boot the game or you can reach for a
mouse. I guess that is an option, but
that wouldn't be very console gamer of
you. One reason for this could be that
Xbox mode in its current state doesn't
leverage known launch flags and it fully
opens game launchers in the background,
which kind of works against the idea of
a seamless console-like experience. If
you'd like to further review Lab's
findings, check out the Lab's companion
article linked down below. Before you
take off and do that though, it's worth
discussing the fact that while Xbox game
mode does not offer performance
benefits, I still believe that it is a
small step toward a larger goal that
will be positive for gamers. Not that
long ago, games were optimized for
console first, often leaving PC players
with buggy, unoptimized ports. That's
because the low-level code for consoles
needed to be rewritten into something
that Windows could actually understand.
This created the same kind of
compatibility wall that Linux gamers
faced before Proton came along. And PC
gamers often had to wait months, years,
or even forever for devs to manually
scale that wall. Microsoft alone had
three fragmented software development
kits that held many games hostage on one
platform until the devs had the time and
resources to port over their game. The
UniFi GDK now, at least from Microsoft,
can hopefully result in something
approaching console level optimization
and availability on the PC. And Xbox
mode on PC is a part of this same push
that Microsoft is making for platform
unification and treating their PC gaming
customers like first class citizens.
Also, even if it doesn't have much
benefit today, I do still think that
there's hope for ongoing optimization. I
wouldn't blame you for thinking. I mean,
how in the Sam Hill is Xbox mode
different from Steam big picture mode?
But there is a difference and it's in
being a system versus an app level UI.
Xbox mode replaces the traditional
Windows interface. All the icons, the
start menu, everything, poof. On the
other hand, big picture mode is simply
an app that is sitting on top of Windows
and has no ability to shoe away
background processes. So with that in
mind, you would think that there would
be a benefit to using it already, but
hey, this is Microsoft. So we actually
found that when we were playing a Steam
game in particular, we ended up using
more RAM in Xbox mode than in Steam big
picture mode, just running over top of
regular Windows. This is most likely
because Steam opens up anyway on Xbox
mode, and Big Picture users don't need
to open up the Xbox app. The other
difference is that big picture mode is,
if we're being honest, quite a bit
cleaner to use. So, even though we're
hoping for the best for Xbox mode, and
we expect it to continue to get better,
you're probably going to want to stick
with big picture mode for the time
being. That is, unless you really value
Xbox mode's automatic detection of both
Steam and non- Steam games, and you are
a-okay with not being able to use more
than one display while Xbox mode is
Xboxing. In conclusion, while Xbox mode
is most certainly halfbaked today,
Microsoft is trending towards a world
where it will be even more likely that
the game you want to play will be
available on the platform you already
own, regardless of whether it's an Xbox
or a PC. So, the attitude has improved.
They just need to get their act together
before people try this thing, realize
it's not worth it, and then never try it
again. Just like people realize that
it's never worth hearing this segue to
our sponsor, but they were wrong. It is
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If you guys enjoyed this video, why not
check out the one we did recently
talking about what has finally prompted
Microsoft to take action, even if that
action is a little slower and a little
less effective than we'd like so far.