Last year, Microsoft finally put some effort into making Windows 11 less dreadful for handheld PCs, launching Xbox Full Screen Experience – a stripped-back, more gamepad-friendly interface specifically for launching and installing games – on the Asus ROG Xbox Ally family. The same update has been strangely unforthcoming to other Steam Deck rivals, but it sounds like the Lenovo Legion Go series is finally getting access soon. There’s a preview build that Legion Go, Legion Go S, and Legion Go 2 owners can try right now, too.
As far as I’ve seen, there isn’t a release date for the full rollout, though Lenovo marketing man Ben Green has confirmed that Xbox Full Screen Experience is “finally coming” to Legion portables. Getting hands on it early begins with signing up here; I did, and within an hour, received a download link to a Windows registry update. Executing this on my Legion Go 2 and restarting, sure enough, got Xbox FSE up and running. This preview is only accessible for another 29 hours at the time of writing, mind.
While I’ll probably do a more in-depth look later this week, I’m wary of presenting this is some wonderfully transformative improvement. Xbox FSE still isn’t as snappy and responsive as the Deck’s SteamOS – this preview, on the Legion Go 2, is often downright sluggish – and Microsoft couldn’t resist stuffing it with lures towards their own Game Pass stuff. That said, FSE is unquestionably better suited to handheld and controller use than Win11’s desktop-minded interface, and it’s still dutiful in offering quick access to games from Steam and other non-Xboxy launchers.
There’s even a hint of hope that Legion hardware will be able to make better use of the Xbox mode’s ‘optimisations’, which largely amount to disabling certain background processes that Windows runs in regular desktop mode. The ROG Xbox Ally X didn’t run faster at all with FSE in play, and my Legion Go 2 saw no framerate difference in The Talos Principle 2, but Forza Horizon 5 (on Low quality) climbed from 76fps to 81fps after I installed FSE. Delicious crumbs of improvement, those. At the very least, it’s probably going to be worth installing once the proper release goes through.
I also can’t help but wonder if Xbox FSE will, in the coming years, have a much bigger role to play than tuning up some handhelds. Last week, Microsoft announced that Project Helix, their next home console, will play both Xbox and PC games, meaning it’ll need an operating system that’s compatible with the Windows catalogue while also being fully navigable with a gamepad. It’s not hard to see Full Screen Experience acting as the quiet proof-of-concept for something like that, if not the intended basis for the whole thing. The only alternative would be to create yet another new console codebase and make Windows games work though some kind of Proton-esque compatibility layer, but then why bother when you have Windows right there?
