Xbox’s Handheld Compatibility Program needs serious work

Handheld gaming PCs are impressive, but at the end of the day, they’re running integrated graphics originally meant for laptops and cheaper PCs. That means they have some fairly hard limits in terms of graphical oomph. To help owners stay in the know about what games will work on what devices, it’s launched the “Handheld Compatibility Program,” a competitor for the Steam Deck Verified system.

As laid out in advance of the ROG Xbox Ally launch, games will fall into one of four designated categories:

• Handheld optimized: Good to go without any tweaks or settings changes
• Mostly compatible: “Minor adjustments might be required on your supported handheld”
• Unsupported: The game won’t run on a handheld Windows PC
• Not tested: The game has not been checked by Microsoft for handheld compatibility

A Microsoft representative told me that 85 percent of games tested were either “Handheld optimized” or “Mostly compatible,” as of three weeks ago. Presumably said testing prioritized popular PC games, and those available on the Xbox Game Pass.

As handheld gaming PCs become a more sizable chunk of the market, support is a big question mark for new games. Just about any game that uses 2D graphics or a low-poly visual style will run fine on a handheld unless it needs access to something specific like anti-cheat for multiplayer (which often trips on the Steam Deck’s Linux-based SteamOS). But the newest AAA games with intense graphics often chug on portable hardware, even though it’s optimized for gaming.

For example, Hollow Knight: Silksong, a 2D Metroidvania that uses a lot of active effects to spruce up its (very pretty) 2D sprites, is “Handheld optimized.” The new The Outer Worlds 2, despite being published by Microsoft and on Game Pass, is not on the list. Like other Microsoft-published games on Game Pass, it’s available via streaming on most devices.

The Handheld Compatibility Program is a good move from Microsoft, a necessity if it wants to compete with the Steam Deck and label the ROG Xbox Ally as both an Xbox and a serious option for PC gamers. But I have some notes.

One, these labels don’t appear on the Microsoft/Xbox online store, at least in my browser. You need to head to this specific page, the “browse” interface, which is laid out much differently (though it links to the standard store page). Contrast this with Steam listings, which show a nice big “Verified” check under Steam Deck compatibility.

Crucially, you can’t search the listings of the current page that lists handheld compatibility. I was only able to find The Outer Worlds 2 — or rather, confirm its absence — by going in reverse alphabetical order and scrolling through several cumbersome pages. You can filter by genre, age rating, price, and a few other factors. But strangely, only “Handheld optimized” games are visible under the handheld compatibility filter. If you click “Mostly compatible,” “Unsupported,” or “Not tested,” you’ll get zero results at the time of this writing. (Steam shows games as “Playable,” “Unsupported,” or “Not tested” for the Steam Deck if they’re not Verified.) This needs a lot of work.

Another big question looms over this program: differing hardware. Initially only the ROG Xbox Ally (and by extension, the more powerful Xbox Ally X) are mentioned on the handheld compatibility promotional page. These are the first devices to get the Xbox Fullscreen Interface, and Microsoft’s tacit endorsement as part of the Xbox platform — “This is an Xbox,” and all that.

Microsoft

But the interface will be coming to other Windows-powered handheld PCs, like Lenovo’s Legion Go series, next year. Not to mention older members of the ROG Ally line, which use marginally less powerful hardware. So far “Steam Deck Verified” applies to all Steam Deck hardware. What happens when a new game is just resource-intensive enough to run smoothly on the ROG Xbox Ally, but not the ROG Ally X from 2024? What about different editions of the same hardware with different chips, like the Ryzen Z1 versus the Z1 Extreme?

It’s not shocking that Microsoft is behind Valve in this sort of thing. After all, the Steam Deck has a 3.5-year head start. But with high prices for handhelds drawing ire, not to mention the Xbox Game Pass itself, Microsoft needs to make the Xbox platform as appealing as possible if it wants to compete.