For decades, Windows has been the platform for PC gaming: open, flexible and built with players in mind. From the days of classics like Diablo to today’s cutting-edge experiences powered by DirectX and AI-driven graphics, Windows has partnered with developers, creators, OEMs and silicon innovators to push hardware and software forward. That collaboration continues to deliver new ways to play, whether on powerful desktops or purpose-built handheld devices.
In 2025, Windows 11 gaming became faster, more portable and more visually immersive.
We introduced a purpose-built handheld experience with the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X, expanded gaming capabilities for Windows-powered Arm laptops and shipped DirectX advances that boosted ray tracing performance by up to 2.3× on supported hardware, paving the way for neural rendering.
Together with the gaming community, our commitment is to make Windows the best place to game—no matter where you play—by continuing to innovate and deliver experiences that enable players everywhere. Here’s a closer look at the innovations that shaped this year.
Handheld innovation
The freedom of Windows, combined with the power of Xbox and deep partnership with ASUS and AMD, brought the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X powered by AMD Ryzen Z2 Series processors. These collaborations elevated handheld gaming, where performance, power efficiency, input latency and access to your games are critical. This partnership has made gaming on Windows better across all devices, and many of this year’s innovations stem directly from those efforts.
Xbox full screen experience (FSE) for handhelds
Shipping with the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds, Xbox full screen experience is a controller-first, optimized gaming experience. It creates a console-like home that puts your games at the center of the experience, while minimizing background activity and deferring non-essential tasks. The result is smoother frame pacing and more consistent performance when every watt counts. Today, the full screen experience is available on the ROG Xbox Ally, ROG Xbox Ally X and other Windows 11 handhelds currently in market.
Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD)
As a player, there is nothing more exciting than starting a new game for the very first time. Advanced Shader Delivery on the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds gets you into the fun faster by delivering precompiled shaders at install time, eliminating most of the wait time and stuttering when you launch a game for the first time.
The numbers speak for themselves: in Avowed, first-run load time dropped by over 80% and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 dropped by over 95%. Dozens of titles on the Xbox PC app now support ASD, with more on the way—thanks to the collaboration between AMD and Microsoft.
For developers, ASD is supported in the Agility SDK, giving studios tools to prepare and validate precompiled shader bundles within their existing game development routines, opening up ASD to even more games.
System-level performance
The ROG Xbox Ally also pushed us to deliver console-style performance on Windows 11, treating responsiveness as a system-wide priority optimized end-to-end in partnership with game developers.
In 2025, this included:
- Tuned power management and CPU frequency profiles for the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X, improving efficiency without sacrificing performance
- More efficient unified memory behavior on Ryzen APUs, reducing frame-time variance and memory contention
- Lower CPU overhead across controller input, RGB lighting services, graphics drivers and background processes
Much of this shipped jointly with AMD and ASUS. AMD shipped driver optimizations, improved UMA performance, reduced CPU overhead in the graphics stack and provided game-specific fixes through driver releases. These improvements began with handhelds but now benefit the broader Windows ecosystem.
Windows on Arm
In 2025, we focused on laying the foundation for a broader, more diverse Windows gaming experience on Arm. This included enabling local game installs through the Xbox PC app, expanding compatibility and performance in the Prism emulator and delivering native anti-cheat solutions from partners including Easy Anti-Cheat.
Local gameplay with Xbox PC app (Insiders)
In August, we enabled Windows Insiders on Arm devices to download and play supported titles directly from the Xbox PC app, including the majority of games included in Xbox Game Pass. This means local play for a much larger number of titles without relying on cloud streaming.
Expanded Prism compatibility
Prism, the emulator that runs x86/x64 software on Arm, now supports AVX and AVX2 extensions to the x86 instruction set. Because modern games increasingly rely on these extensions, this significantly expands both compatibility and performance for emulated games.
Native anti-cheat support
Anti-cheat has long been a barrier to competitive gaming on Arm. This year, Easy Anti-Cheat added Windows on Arm support through collaboration between Epic, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Microsoft—joining BattlEye, Denuvo and XIGNCODE3. Many widely used anti-cheat systems and their games now support Arm, including Fortnite.
These anti-cheat providers, across Arm and x64 alike, are strengthened by Windows security features like Virtualization-Based Security (VBS), Secure Boot, TPM 2.0 and remote attestation, which establish a hardware-rooted, verifiable trusted state.
Leading titles leverage these protections to make it harder for unauthorized code to take hold and to validate that PCs are configured for trust. As more games adopt these standards, players benefit from fairer matches across the entire Windows ecosystem.
DirectX and audio leadership
DirectX has powered PC gaming for over thirty years. 2025 marked 25 years since DirectX 8 introduced programmable shaders and 10 years since DirectX 12 brought low-level GPU control. This year, we shipped new capabilities that improve ray tracing and set the stage for the future of neural rendering. We also continued advancing Windows’ leadership in gaming audio, from spatial sound to next-generation wireless technology.
DirectX Raytracing 1.2 (DXR 1.2)
DXR 1.2 introduced two key features:
- Opacity Micromaps accelerate ray traversal through alpha-tested geometry like foliage and fences.
- Shader Execution Reordering lets the GPU regroup similar rays for better coherence and utilization.
On compatible hardware, these features can deliver up to 2.3× performance gains in supported scenarios, making advanced ray tracing more practical in real games.
Neural rendering (preview)
We’re building the foundation for integrating efficient ML models directly into the rendering pipeline, enabling tasks like denoising, upscaling and material enhancement. These capabilities are available in preview today through cooperative vectors in Shader Model 6.9, and we’re expanding toward a broader linear algebra feature set to reach more audiences in the future.
Bluetooth LE Audio
Since adding support for the modern LE Audio standard to Windows 11 in 2023, we’ve improved audio quality and expanded accessibility for gamers.
- Lower-latency audio reduces the delay between on-screen action and what you hear compared to Bluetooth Classic A2DP audio, ensuring audible cues can be heard and with time to react.
What’s next for PC gaming with Windows 11
The enhancements and improvements we introduced this year are shaping the future of gaming. We’re building experiences designed to empower players to play what they want, with whom they want, wherever they want—and we’re excited to deliver even more in the year ahead.
Xbox full screen experience (FSE) for Windows 11 form factors, available in preview today
FSE started on handhelds. It is now expanding beyond handhelds and will be coming to even more Windows devices. Currently available in preview, Windows and Xbox Insiders can try it on Windows 11 PCs: desktops, laptops and 2-in-1s.
The experience delivers a controller-first interface for navigation, intuitive game launching and minimized distractions on any PC. It’s a gaming-first, full-screen environment where players can easily browse and launch titles from across their game library—including most popular PC storefronts. We’re excited to hear your feedback, so please keep them coming.
Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD) expansion
ASD preloads game shaders during download, allowing select games to launch faster, run smoother and use less battery on the first play. We’re continuing to add ASD support to more games on the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X, and we’ve begun early integration work to support additional hardware and storefronts.
Auto Super Resolution (Auto SR) preview
Auto SR is our OS-level AI upscaling feature: delivering sharper visuals and smoother framerates in DirectX games running at lower resolution, with no developer work required.
Auto SR first shipped on Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon X processors, and in early 2026 we’re bringing a public preview to the ROG Xbox Ally X, running on AMD’s Ryzen AI NPU.
Performance fundamentals
We’re committed to making Windows the best place to play, and we will continue refining system behaviors that matter most to gaming: background workload management, power and scheduling improvements, graphics stack optimizations, and updated drivers.
Explore what’s next
Update to the latest Windows 11 build, join the Windows and Xbox Insider programs for early access to full screen experience on PC, and look for ASD-enabled games for faster first-run load times. Auto SR arrives on the ROG Xbox Ally X early next year.
And if you’re heading to GDC in March, keep an eye on the schedule—we look forward to sharing more as we continue to shape the future of PC gaming.