The Ally’s Xbox Fullscreen Experience comes to the MSI Claw | usagoldmines.com

It’s been less than a month since the Asus ROG Xbox Ally arrived, debuting Microsoft’s optimized Windows interface for handheld PC gaming devices. This Steam Deck-style UI is exclusive to the Xbox-branded Asus hardware… for now. We know it’ll be coming to other devices sooner than later, especially with the MSI Claw now getting a preview of the interface.

The news comes straight from the horse’s mouth, as it was announced on the Windows Insider Blog (spotted by TechRadar). The Fullscreen Experience is notably lacking the Xbox branding on that term, which Microsoft is shortening to FSE. (Surely “XFE” would be better? Maybe it’s a contract thing, I dunno.) The interface is “rolling out to MSI Claw models today,” if you’re on the Dev or Beta Channel for the KB5067115 build of Windows 11. You’ll need to join the Windows Insider Program, update, then dive into the Settings menu to enable it.

Precisely which models of the MSI Claw are supported wasn’t spelled out. There are several out there: the original Claw A1M released last year, notable for being the first Intel-based handheld from a major manufacturer; the Claw 8 AI, a newer design with an upgraded Lunar Lake processor and larger 8-inch screen; and the Claw A8, a variant of the 8-inch version with the same AMD Ryzen Z2 processors seen in more recent handhelds from Asus, Lenovo, etc.

We knew this was coming, and a few intrepid testers were already tweaking Windows to enable the FSE on non-Asus handhelds. Still, it’s surprising to see it come to a handheld from another brand so quickly, considering how tight Microsoft and Asus have been during the launch of the ROG Xbox Ally. If I can put on my tech journalist speculation hat, I’d guess that Asus has some official period of exclusivity for the interface tied to the Xbox deal, probably calendar year 2025. The Windows Insider Program might be a way for Microsoft to get around such an agreement and get some much-needed testing in before rolling it out to more users.

Microsoft says that other manufacturers will have the option to enable the Fullscreen Experience “in the coming months.” That implies that there’s quite a lot of back-and-forth between Microsoft and OEMs on this topic, so don’t expect all these handhelds to get the FSE with the flip of a switch. That said, it looks like it won’t be too hard to turn it on manually with some tweaking.