The Xbox app has a new compact mode for Windows handhelds
The Xbox app has a new compact mode for Windows handhelds
The mode makes the app fit better on devices like the ROG Ally.
The mode makes the app fit better on devices like the ROG Ally.
Probably fits well with having game pass on handhelds; that’s one of the notable disadvantages of the Steam Deck, even with all the great emulation for other stores (I’ve been playing Odyssey off my UPlay account) it can’t handle WinStore games.
8That's MS being shitty, but hopefully they'll change their tune soon. One of the artificial restrictions is needing to have the games installed on an NTFS file system. I actually formatted my ROG's SD card with NTFS so I could install my MS games to it.
Made me sad, because doing that makes me have to commit entirely to keeping it Windows. Otherwise I would have probably dual-booted ChimaeraOS or something.
5If you want to dual boot you should be able to mount the NTFS partition in Linux and run games off it using Lutris/Proton
2
Isn't cause they use a different format (UWP) instead of an EXE?
1They still use EXEs but they've heavily obfuscated and restricted the file access. Games are definitely not UWP.
If you go and look into a directory you'll see more or less the same thing you'd see in the Steamapps directory, but it requires admin access and other funky stuff to even view, let alone touch.
Functionally the difference is basically just MS has heavier DRM which causes problems for things like mods. Starfield on Gamepass is already worse than Starfield on Steam because it's incompatible with a bunch of mods without weird shit like running Cheat Engine.
4
Sure it can. Install Windows on it. I don't get why people consider the default OS of any of these handhelds to be a downside. They're computers. Just install what you want.
1Say your audio stops working.
On the installed OS, you can ask the device’s manufacturer for support, and there will be 20 articles out about what’s gone wrong. If you installed a secondary OS, you might find much much less, or there might be no fix at all. The manufacturer doesn’t have to help you, nor do they care.
It’s a bit like being an outlaw. Sure, the methods may be out there, but the protections aren’t. Even if 20 people on social media say the secondary OS works well, when something breaks none of those people are volunteering to be your tech support.
Plus, SteamOS as a whole has much better controller support than Windows. From what I understand, Lenovo has added some of its own software to account for that kind of thing on its handheld.
1
Yes, it's nice, but can you make a Windows that's designed for handhelds and not full of shit? Thanks.
I literally spent an hour decluttering the OS when I bought the machine with Win10Privacy. Why does my game console have Teams? Why does my enterprise computer have the Xbox app?
If it wasn't for the ASUS tools that you need to manage the hardware effectively, I would have wiped it and put Tiny11 on there.
3there's a way to put SteamOS on the Asus no?
2Sort of.
ChimaeraOS is a fork of SteamOS designed for other handhelds, and it needs some funky firmware flashing for it to work properly. For the ROG, I think I need to do some weird shit to get Bluetooth and sound working.
When the project reaches maturity, which it will, I have total faith it'll be a better platform for gaming on the handheld given the optimizations to the Zen chips. All of the handhelds are running the same internals, more or less, in terms of the Zen 1/Extreme processors. Steam has been optimizing a lot for the Deck and every update improves performance in a meaningful way. It remains to be seen if MS will customize a Windows version for handhelds. If they don't significantly improve the experience, all of us ROG-gers and Legionnaires are going to be eventually running Linux because it'll just be better on the hardware.
3