Microsoft promises it will upgrade Windows 11 with better performance for gamers in 2026 — "we’re committed to making Windows the best place to play"

Microsoft has teased that next year will see some significant updates come to Windows 11 that are designed to position the platform as the best place to play video games. In the past year, we've seen the company slowly move to adopt new handheld gaming form factors, and it seems like there's more to come in this space.

"We’re committed to making Windows the best place to play, and we will continue refining system behaviors that matter most to gaming," Microsoft says in a blog post talking about what's coming next for gamers.

The company highlights a number of core pillars that it will address in the coming months: "background workload management, power and scheduling improvements, graphics stack optimizations, and updated drivers." Improving these elements of the platform should allow Windows to run lighter, and assign freed up resources to games to allow them to run better.

Microsoft has also confirmed that Auto SR (Super Resolution) will be coming to handheld gaming PCs next year, first on the Xbox Ally X running AMD's Ryzen AI NPU. Auto SR is an OS-level upscaling feature that delivers sharper visual s and smoother framerates in compatible games without any developer input.

Ther's also Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD) on the way to more Windows 11 devices, which preloads game shaders during download and allows select games to launch much faster, while also running smoother and use less battery when loaded up for the first time. "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."

It's clear that Microsoft is eager to respond to recent moves from Valve, which in the last month just announced its own Steam Machine console to take on Microsoft's next-gen Xbox vision. The Steam Deck also repopularized handheld gaming, which Windows has only just started to natively support.

Now, with the Xbox Ally and improvements to Windows 11 for handhelds and controllers, the company is slowly getting ready to compete head-to-head with Valve and reposition Windows as the best place to play video games, regardless of ecosystem or library lock in.

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