2 mo. ago • 92%

With SteamOS coming, Microsoft needs to up its game in the handheld gaming market

www.xda-developers.com With SteamOS coming, Microsoft needs to up its game in the handheld gaming market

Valve has begun its quest to bring SteamOS to other handheld consoles, and Microsoft should be worried.

Steam Deck @sopuli.xyz With SteamOS coming, Microsoft needs to up its game in the handheld gaming market [if it's going to compete]

62 comments

How about they don't? Open-source Linux, with contributions from gaming companies like valve, will always better for the consumer than a proprietary OS like Windows, that is designed by committee to show the most ads.

Linux is the new gaming os, Microsoft had too many Windows 8 moments.

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- You remember it as Windows 8. But Windows ME haunt me.
  
  43
  
  Thing is, ME as an idea made sense. Win2K wasn't targeted to consumers, XP was in the pipeline for that, but they needed an interim version until it was ready. It looked like Win2K, but ostensibly compatible with the Win9x line. They just fucked up the execution on the internals, so it was terribly unstable.
  
  Windows 8 had the opposite problem: it improved on Win7 internals, so it was solid, but had a terrible UI that no one asked for.
  
  One could argue that the reason ME failed was very possibly because it was rushed. Win8, on the other hand, looks very much like designed by comitee with either very misguided designers or marketing people at the helm. Because of that, Win8 feels like a much worse failure to me.
  
  15
  
  Tell us younglings why
  
  14
  
  I like how we've completely erased Vista from our collective memories at this point.
  
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- always better for the consumer
  
  Always?
  
  2
  
  Yes. Windows changed from a high-quality OS that was designed to help users run applications, to a low-quality OS that was designed to show users ads. The latter will never be good for consumers.
  
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No they really dont. Let windows die thw death its always deserved.

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They don’t “need” to. There are games that companies refuse to let people run on Linux, so there will be a market for Windows, no matter how shit the experience is.

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- For now. If enough of the market shifts to Linux those companies will support Linux. Particularly since the CrowdStrike fiasco has spurred Microsoft to crack down on kernel level access which means the days of anti-cheat rootkits are numbered. It's not going to be long before there's no functional difference between gaming on Windows and gaming on Linux.
  
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  Can SteamOS be installed on a desktop or is it only for the handhelds?
  
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TIL Microsoft has a handheld gaming platform.

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- They effectively don't. Several of the hardware OEMs saw the Steam Deck and rushed copies to market that run desktop Windows with some launcher they slapped together, and they don't hold a candle to something someone thought about for a few minutes.
  
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Microsoft flamed out of the mobile OS space precisely because they insisted that Windows not fork, but be identical software running on all devices.

So now, there is no such thing as a windows phone, but every time I wake up my computer I see a vestigial lock screen that I have to dismiss before I log in.

They designed their phones like a company entitled to 85% of the market share. Something tells me they're not going to reform just to capture that mobile game space.

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- That Lock Screen is not vestigial, it still loads and displays bing ads. You are the product, not the customer.
  
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  I have never seen an ad on my lock screen. Possibly because of all the stuff I have disabled and the fact that I use windows 10. I have some questions.
  
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- What does the login screen have to do with mobile? They've had them since at least Windows 95 (I forget if 3.1 had one), and they've been evolving every release.
  
  If you mean the screen before the login, that's been around since at least Windows 95 too, though it didn't used to be default and required you to press Ctrl+alt+del to dismiss (which before win95 would reboot your computer)
  
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Let's not bring this to their attention so we have more freedom from Microsoft.

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I don't think they care. With this console generation they have shifted away from treating gaming like a product with certain hardware and software. It's more of a service thing to them with game pass and cloud gaming

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I'm surprised Microsoft didn't make an Xbox-like version of Windows to flash on for these handhelds yet.

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- The Xbox literally runs a custom build of Windows, that runs in a Virtual Machine, on top of another custom Windows based hypervisor. Then games are run in a separate VM.
  
  All they'd have to do is port the hypervisor to different hardware, then the rest would run on top just fine.
  
  24
  
  Really, games run that far away from metal? Amazing, I didn’t have a clue.
  
  30
  
  That sounds like driving a car by attaching the steering system and wheels to the steering wheel and pedals of another car.
  
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  Do you have a source for this? Every time I've gone looking for details about the Xbox I've not found anything comprehensive.
  
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Oh, I hope they don’t though

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nope

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- Isn't that because Microsoft either pays system integrators to only install Windows or threatens that they will stop providing relatively cheap Windows keys if they provide the option to start with Linux? I could have sworn I'd heard that somewhere.
  
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Why do I get the weird feeling that they wouldn't use Xbox, but rather Zune, if they did.

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Ok forgive me for sounding stupid but imagine a tv with steam os built in.

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- I'd rather my TV be a TV, so that I can use it to display whatever I want, instead of being locked to a certain system and hardware configuration.
  
  27
  
  Same, all I want is a big display with good CEC support for volume, power on/off and input control.
  
  12
- In way it's already a thing. You can install Steam Link on TVs running Android TV
  
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  True but imagine a gaming tv with all the hardware requirements, and true steam os, you could turn it on and load up a game straight from the tv and not have to stream it
  
  1
  
  I find moonlight/sunshine work better, also available on android tvs
  
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- Permanently Deleted
  
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- As a virtual machine I could see that and it's possibly the only way such a product would be viable. The thing is, stadia tried this in a round about fashion and it failed. Geforce now does basically this and it's available as an app on lots of streaming boxes and smart TVs. So effectively this kind of already exists in a way that's less prone to obsolescence but I'm not sure most people want it because of the tradeoffs of a required internet connection etc. It's the kind of thing that sounds like something people would want until you even stop to think about it for a moment. The more you think about it the worse an idea it seems.
  
  There's different demographics of gamers out there. It's not useful to most of them for lots of reasons like built in anti-cheat, drm, requirement of an internet connection even for solo/story mode games, the fact that some gamers want bleeding edge everything while others want stability. Still others only play older games and for them this doesn't do much except make finding drivers and virtual environments harder. Then there's the mod community etc. It just seems like it would be a nightmare for a lot of people.
  
  Also. If you've ever taken apart a modern TV you know how finicky and fragile some of the parts and pieces are. I wouldn't want to attempt to upgrade my ram just to end up damaging the backlight module or the screen.
  
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I don't know that valve needs to bring steamOS to other devices. Pretty sure Bazzite is good enough for most folks.

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