The big picture: Microsoft has spent the past few years rushing to answer the potential threat that Valve's Steam Deck and SteamOS present to Windows. At this year's Game Developers Conference, Microsoft outlined the next steps in its efforts to make Windows gaming smoother on living room desktop PCs, handheld devices, and other form factors.
The Windows full-screen experience, now called "Xbox Mode," will exit beta next month in select territories. The new interface, which enables users to launch PC games and other apps using only a controller, debuted last year on the Asus ROG Xbox Ally and will soon be available on all Windows 11 desktops, laptops, tablets, and other devices.
Xbox Mode is essentially Microsoft's response to Valve's SteamOS interface and Steam Big Picture Mode, which let users launch PC games and adjust settings through console-like menus. The interface makes the Steam Deck significantly more comfortable to use than handheld PCs running the standard Windows desktop.
Microsoft introduced its remedy for the discrepancy on the Asus ROG Xbox Ally when it launched last October. The following month, the controller-friendly UI entered beta for other Windows devices. Users can seamlessly switch between Xbox mode and the traditional desktop – a feature that should be useful on handhelds and HTPCs.
Another feature moving from the ROG Xbox Ally to other PCs is Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD). Now in internal testing, ASD is Microsoft's attempt to address the shader compilation problem that has plagued PC gaming over the last few years.
Many titles either compile shaders during gameplay, which negatively impacts performance, or build them upon initial startup, forcing players to wait several minutes before starting a game. The Steam Deck's locked-down hardware configuration allows users to download pre-compiled shaders, and ASD brought similar functionality to the ROG Xbox Ally.
Developers can begin trialing ASD in May. A new DirectX SDK update allows them to collect and package shaders deterministically during development, and Microsoft's cloud will process and distribute the shaders so players no longer need to compile them locally.
At GDC, Microsoft also mentioned DirectStorage for the first time in years. The technology aims to fully utilize the performance of modern SSDs to shorten load times, but few titles have incorporated it since its 2023 debut. Updates will reduce I/O latency and accelerate asset streaming by introducing support for Zstandard compression and a new feature called Game Asset Conditioning Library.
Additionally, Microsoft is enhancing support for machine learning in DirectX. The introduction of linear algebra support in high-level shader language (HLSL) will allow developers to apply ML directly in shaders. While discussing DirectX in regard to its upcoming hybrid PC-console, codenamed Project Helix, Microsoft also noted that ML and neural technologies such as upscaling, frame generation, and texture compression will play a larger role in the near future.
DirectX and PIX will also receive the largest batch of debugging and tooling features in over a decade. Inspired by Xbox debugging tools, DirectX Dump Files will standardize GPU crash data collection. Meanwhile, new HLSL shader-level breakpoints will streamline debugging, and Shader Explorer will introduce a new method for inspecting and debugging shaders. Some of the new features will enter preview in May, with others following later this year.
