Microsoft wants to make its mark on the handheld scene; the only problem is that the competition is pretty fierce. Even if you ignore the tons of handheld consoles that were released in the past few years, the Steam Deck still puts up a decent fight despite being the pioneer in the scene. People are also noticing that SteamOS runs their games better than Windows 11. With Valve's operating system set for a general release, Microsoft runs the risk of losing market share as users switch over to SteamOS instead, especially if the latter version costs less.

Fortunately, Microsoft appears to be aware of this, as it has made a significant effort to enter the market. Not only did it leverage the knowledge of the Asus ROG department for its console and add a new "Windows 11 handheld gaming mode" to its system, but it has also announced a swathe of new updates to keep up with SteamOS.

Microsoft announces the "Handheld Compatibility Program" to help devs get their games on Windows

In a post on the Microsoft Game Dev blog, the company shows off everything it has planned for its handhelds. The main feature is the Handheld Compatibility Program, which appears to achieve a similar goal to Valve's "Deck Verified" scheme, but for Windows 11 handheld devices. These will list games as either "Handheld Optimized" or "Mostly Compatible" to indicate whether they match or mostly match Microsoft's requirements for games on handhelds.

We're also seeing the introduction of Advanced Shader Delivery, which Microsoft hopes will cut down those dreaded shader compiling wait times:

Advanced shader delivery addresses one of the most frustrating challenges for PC gamers today – long load times and disruptive stuttering during a game’s first launch. These delays are caused by the need to compile graphics shaders and cache them for future use. For a deep-dive on this topic, we recommend reading Epic’s article – “Game engines and shader stuttering.” We have partnered with teams across Xbox and at AMD to precompile this data and distribute it at download time for key titles via the Xbox PC app This approach not only gets you into your games faster, but it also prevents most instances of stutter that cause performance issues.

Finally, there's the announcement of the public preview of PlayFab Game Saves. This seems to act similarly to Steam's Cloud Sync, where save data is per game, not per device. It lets you pick up where you left off when you swap devices and syncs your save across all of your consoles. Interestingly, Microsoft does state that the feature will have "support for the Xbox and Steam ecosystems," which matches its desire to unite all storefronts under one Xbox banner.