I'm excited about the Steam Deck but hesitant about this Linux decision. Despite Gabe Newell's objections, Windows works quite well as a gaming UI. The Xbox runs Windows and all of Steam's games work on Windows, so calling it a "steaming pile" or whatever really isn't accurate. It's more like sour grapes.
Steam managed to create the Windows gaming environment out of whole cloth. Microsoft's attempt to control gaming for PCs failed horribly, leaving Steam the victor. But, by the same token, Steam has no console presence, which with subscription models like Xbox Game Pass, can be very profitable.
What kind of console can they do? Not a home one. It's almost over for those anyway. So, a portable. What OS can it run? Not Windows. Steam isn't going to write an Xbox-like UI for Windows that would look good on the Deck, something Microsoft addressed back in the days of Xbox One.
The Xbox UI (and its integration with the PC) have only gotten better since then. So much so that many games are now "play anywhere," meaning you can buy it on one device, play on another, and pickup and play later on a third via streaming. This is remarkable and fantastic!
Will Linux on the Steam Deck enable this kind of "play anywhere" model? Hmmm.... Maybe. It will be a hard road. The article mentions that the "top shooters" don't run on Linux. That's pretty bad. Those are the games that have heavy user bases and you need them onboard.
I know. But that's not a smoothly-integrated user experience and navigating the rest of Windows on that machine without a mouse and keyboard is going to be a pain.
Steam didn't build a console UI that works from the boot state, like MS did for the Xbox version of Windows. If it were up to me, I think I would have picked that approach rather than adding an emulation layer (Proton/WINE) in-between.
You can set BPM to launch at boot just by going into Steam -> Settings -> Interface tab -> Enable “Run Steam when my computer starts” and “Start Steam in Big Picture Mode”
Right. I'm talking about the rest of the computer. How will you manage files on a Steam Deck? How will you access Windows Update? Is your "desktop" going to be covered in icons?
Using Windows on Steam Deck (not using Steam on Steam Deck, using the Windows OS) is going to be difficult because the device lacks a mouse and keyboard on which Windows is dependent. Fixing this for Xbox required making an entirely new UI (for the OS, updates, sign-ins, everything) which Steam has not done for the Deck.
I think you'll be very hard pressed to use a tiny device without a mouse or keyboard effectively in Windows. Even Windows 11 contains numerous small and overlapping dialogs with all kinds of UI affordances. None of this is setup for touch. Yes, theoretically, you could get it to work, but it won't be fun. The pop-up keyboard, for example, will likely cover a big part of whatever dialog box you're typing into. Moving and managing windows with touch is also not fun at all.
Not coincidentally, this is the same reason that MacOS doesn't have touchscreens. Everything about that OS also requires a mouse (or touchpad) and a keyboard. Just adding a touchscreen to a Mac won't do it.
It'll probably be a bit awkward to use for anything other than gaming, maybe if anyone really wants media playback they can just duct tape Kodi to it, which you can do if you add it to Steam as an external app and have it appear in your list of software .
It seems to me that if anyone really wants to do power user stuff on it, they'll dock it and use a keyboard and a mouse anyway on a far larger screen.
You'd probably dock the Steam Deck if you want to manage files. Though I imagine the touch screen would be usable for simple actions like rebooting to update windows. Putting windows into tablet mode and searching with the on screen keyboard may work better than attempting to click icons or use the desktop in handheld mode.
Yes, all of these workarounds are examples of why it's not a workable solution. Can you imagine if a Nintendo Switch required that much falderal? It wouldn't sell.
The point I'm making is that normal folks will not dock it or goof around with touchscreen compromises in order to run Windows, which they will also have to install themselves! This is the opposite of a smooth, integrated, pick-up-and-play experience.
Since MS makes hardware now, what's to keep them from making a handheld that runs the Xbox version of Windows?
Valve's core audience consists of PC Gamers. Any PC Gamer has to be used to a little tinkering. It comes with using a PC instead of a console.
A Microsoft handheld would run less games that a Steam Deck with Windows because console exclusives like Horizon Zero Dawn are available on Steam but will never be on Xbox. An Xbox device also wouldn't support emulators or someone's existing Steam library.
I don't know to what extent it would be worth it for Microsoft to dabble in that area. PlayStation Vita didn't work out so well for Sony.
Xbox runs Windows so MS could make everything work on a handheld device w/ Windows w/ an Xbox-style UI. Xbox ran Windows from the very beginning. Only the "chrome" is different.
I doubt Microsoft would make a handheld that was "open" like the Steam Deck. They'd follow the console business model of only allowing software from the Microsoft store and it would likely not sell very well. It would be Windows Phone all over again.
True. But Nintendo has sold very well from their proprietary handheld device and its store. So they probably think they can. Maybe they can. They already have a great UI in Xbox and a great library of games that will run. They might not need anything else to make it.
My current setup actually involves having a secondary account on my desktop just for gaming with BPM booting up on startup and my PC being set up to log into that desktop automatically, connected to the TV via HDMI. For anything else I've a Microsoft-connected account and a patch on Remote Desktop (which is probably the most impressive feature of Windows, to be honest, at least to me) to allow multiple sessions so I can log into it from my laptop at any time.
I also have two other Samsung TVs with their Tizen OS thingy that has Steam Remote on them so I can log in and play any game remotely from anywhere in the house if I want. It's pretty crazy and impressive, considering that as a kid, growing up it broke my heart that I can't even play the Rayman 2 demo I had because I couldn't afford a 3D accelerated GPU :)
I don't necessarily know how you could write a smoothly-integrated shell for Windows the same way you can for your own Linux distro and not be constantly occupied with catching up and fixing your stuff from the potential changes from Microsoft just to make all the settings and toggles work properly to change things in the underlying Windows OS and then still potentially get issues from the Windows Update process that's out of your control. Going with Linux, in my opinion, solves having to rely on a platform that is potentially a competitor and therefore could turn hostile if they choose to. Microsoft has the advantage that it controls the whole software stack for the Xbox. It's also a giant uphill battle, but one that potentially benefits everyone due to the open source software behind it.
I'm personally also really happy that this gives incentive for AMD to improve their hardware support on Linux.
For sure! Being tied to MS is probably why they didn't do it. I seem to remember that's why Newell made Steam in the first place, so he wasn't tied to MS.
> Steam managed to create the Windows gaming environment out of whole cloth.
As someone who has been using Steam since the early days, this feels incredibly anachronistic. Steam pioneered digital distribution but Windows as a gaming OS was already well established at that point.
Yes, that's what I meant. Surely home computers have been gaming machines since before Windows and that was also a heavy use case for Windows early on.
What I mean was that Steam simplified the selling, installation, updating, forums, mods, everything else -- the store that Microsoft really wanted to have with Games for Windows that never took off.
Not lecturing anyone. Just citing from the article why that might be a stumbling block. I'm a happy Steam customer. No complaints from me and I have no dog in the fight. I hope Steam Deck is very successful.
I'd be happy if Valve's other big legacy for gaming ended up being that they started a snowball that made Linux a viable alternative for gaming. For me the requirement for that would be fairly broad compatibility and a performance that's at least close enough to Windows to not give me the feeling that I'm bottlenecking the hardware I paid all that money for. Other than that I mostly use my desktop as a media server and Linux can already do that more than well enough.
All in all, I'm excited for it in a way I wasn't for the SteamOS box announcement and I really hope they can sustain the momentum for the long run!
Come to think of it Windows licensing isn't tied to your email address rather to your hardware(OEM/OTS). Literally every CPU that needs genuine windows needs to have a paid license even if you just bought two machines in 2 years, such a fucking joke.
Windows that come preinstalled from a hardware vendor have OEM lisc.
If you buy windows that isn't OEM the keys are now bound to your email address (more accurately your Microsoft account) those version of windows are easily transportable between hardware.
People often make the mistake of purchasing OEM windows because of the reduced cost but fail to realize they are hardware bound at registration.
I'm quite happy that Valve is pushing GNU/Linux as a gaming platform. I like that they are working hard on improving Wine, too. I hope it will eventually allow many people migrating to Linux, who are reluctantly staying on Windows just for games, and open a door for gamers currently happy with Windows but open to try Linux.
But this:
> Devoted PC game developers felt especially anxious. Newell called it “a giant sadness.” Blizzard executive VP Rob Pardo tweeted that Windows 8 is “not awesome for Blizzard either” in the wake of Newell’s 'catastrophe' comment.
… as a distant observer, this feels incredibly awkward coming from representatives of companies who are seemingly among the worst offenders, maintaining closed networks / platforms and forcing among the worst DRMs on people.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 71.5 ms ] threadSteam managed to create the Windows gaming environment out of whole cloth. Microsoft's attempt to control gaming for PCs failed horribly, leaving Steam the victor. But, by the same token, Steam has no console presence, which with subscription models like Xbox Game Pass, can be very profitable.
What kind of console can they do? Not a home one. It's almost over for those anyway. So, a portable. What OS can it run? Not Windows. Steam isn't going to write an Xbox-like UI for Windows that would look good on the Deck, something Microsoft addressed back in the days of Xbox One.
The Xbox UI (and its integration with the PC) have only gotten better since then. So much so that many games are now "play anywhere," meaning you can buy it on one device, play on another, and pickup and play later on a third via streaming. This is remarkable and fantastic!
Will Linux on the Steam Deck enable this kind of "play anywhere" model? Hmmm.... Maybe. It will be a hard road. The article mentions that the "top shooters" don't run on Linux. That's pretty bad. Those are the games that have heavy user bases and you need them onboard.
Steam didn't build a console UI that works from the boot state, like MS did for the Xbox version of Windows. If it were up to me, I think I would have picked that approach rather than adding an emulation layer (Proton/WINE) in-between.
Using Windows on Steam Deck (not using Steam on Steam Deck, using the Windows OS) is going to be difficult because the device lacks a mouse and keyboard on which Windows is dependent. Fixing this for Xbox required making an entirely new UI (for the OS, updates, sign-ins, everything) which Steam has not done for the Deck.
Not coincidentally, this is the same reason that MacOS doesn't have touchscreens. Everything about that OS also requires a mouse (or touchpad) and a keyboard. Just adding a touchscreen to a Mac won't do it.
It seems to me that if anyone really wants to do power user stuff on it, they'll dock it and use a keyboard and a mouse anyway on a far larger screen.
The point I'm making is that normal folks will not dock it or goof around with touchscreen compromises in order to run Windows, which they will also have to install themselves! This is the opposite of a smooth, integrated, pick-up-and-play experience.
Since MS makes hardware now, what's to keep them from making a handheld that runs the Xbox version of Windows?
A Microsoft handheld would run less games that a Steam Deck with Windows because console exclusives like Horizon Zero Dawn are available on Steam but will never be on Xbox. An Xbox device also wouldn't support emulators or someone's existing Steam library.
I don't know to what extent it would be worth it for Microsoft to dabble in that area. PlayStation Vita didn't work out so well for Sony.
I also have two other Samsung TVs with their Tizen OS thingy that has Steam Remote on them so I can log in and play any game remotely from anywhere in the house if I want. It's pretty crazy and impressive, considering that as a kid, growing up it broke my heart that I can't even play the Rayman 2 demo I had because I couldn't afford a 3D accelerated GPU :)
I'm personally also really happy that this gives incentive for AMD to improve their hardware support on Linux.
The track pad works surprisingly well as a mouse in this configuration. I used the Steam Controller as a wireless couch mouse, solid.
The Deck has that, plus touchscreen keyboard. Not the best, wouldn't do programming like that, but good enough for configure typing.
As someone who has been using Steam since the early days, this feels incredibly anachronistic. Steam pioneered digital distribution but Windows as a gaming OS was already well established at that point.
What I mean was that Steam simplified the selling, installation, updating, forums, mods, everything else -- the store that Microsoft really wanted to have with Games for Windows that never took off.
All in all, I'm excited for it in a way I wasn't for the SteamOS box announcement and I really hope they can sustain the momentum for the long run!
If you buy windows that isn't OEM the keys are now bound to your email address (more accurately your Microsoft account) those version of windows are easily transportable between hardware.
People often make the mistake of purchasing OEM windows because of the reduced cost but fail to realize they are hardware bound at registration.
But this:
> Devoted PC game developers felt especially anxious. Newell called it “a giant sadness.” Blizzard executive VP Rob Pardo tweeted that Windows 8 is “not awesome for Blizzard either” in the wake of Newell’s 'catastrophe' comment.
… as a distant observer, this feels incredibly awkward coming from representatives of companies who are seemingly among the worst offenders, maintaining closed networks / platforms and forcing among the worst DRMs on people.
It's the pot calling the kettle black.