Home windows 11 players may get among the finest options of the Xbox Sequence X, if feedback from a Microsoft exec are something to go by.

Tom’s Information (opens in new tab) stories that in the course of the launch of the brand new handheld from Asus, the ROG Ally, Roanne Sones, head of Xbox gadgets at Microsoft, dropped a fairly heavy trace that Fast Resume may very well be coming for PC players in some unspecified time in the future.

For the uninitiated, Fast Resume is a critically cool Xbox function that permits you to leap straight right into a recreation with out having to undergo loading up, navigating the principle menu and so forth. You possibly can freeze a number of (supported) video games (as much as 5 of them) on the actual level you allow them, to renew any of them within the blink of a watch.

In an interview on the ROG Ally launch uploaded to YouTube (opens in new tab), Sones talked about totally different platforms and the necessity to recreation in your PC, then change to your handheld, and choose up wherever you had been with no ready – no fuss, simply straight again into the motion.

She then talked about that consoles have some capabilities alongside these traces, particularly Fast Resume, and requested: “How can we take into consideration integrating this into the Home windows platform?”

Sones then talks about how the Ally is “making us [Microsoft] suppose in another way concerning the experiences” throughout totally different gadgets, from handhelds to PCs.

Evaluation: Handheld mode appears a contact extra possible now…

Whereas we have to be cautious round what are simply offhand feedback, the truth that a Microsoft exec has brazenly talked about Fast Resume on this means provides us a good outdated dollop of hope that this functionality will make the transition from Xbox to Home windows 11 finally.

And that’d be a boon for all PC players, particularly for these excited by handhelds just like the Asus ROG Ally, to keep away from faffing about with the clunkier bits of the Home windows 11 interface (which mar the Ally expertise) and loading video games.

Extra broadly, we not too long ago heard information that Microsoft is mulling over a ‘handheld mode’ for Home windows 11 that might retool the desktop completely to be extra appropriate for moveable gaming on a small touchscreen, taking the tack of a tremendously simplified launcher-style UI. That will be best for the ROG Ally and different handheld gaming gadgets (even the Steam Deck, on which you’ll run Home windows 11 in case you like).

For us, Sones feedback right here undoubtedly add weight to the prospect that that is one thing Microsoft is severe about. And given the recognition of the Steam Deck, and curiosity in alternate options just like the ROG Ally on the whole, that heightens the probabilities that we’d see this handheld mode realized as one other string to the gamer’s bow in Home windows 11. (Together with the likes of higher efficiency with DirectStorage, one other boon that’ll matter an increasing number of as time rolls on, and a significant variety of video games really assist the tech).

Let’s face it, with Home windows 11 adoption having been a fairly sluggish affair up to now, Microsoft wants all of the ammo it will possibly muster when it comes to new options to influence of us to improve from Home windows 10.