It's good to have competition and I welcome Microsoft trying to improve their hand held device experience.
But I highly doubt this would ever convince me to switch off the Steam Deck or Steam OS devices.
We'll see how this goes I guess.
this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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Interesting, although I wonder if they’re going to fall into the trap that everyone else has. It’s not good enough to just make a handheld. You need to have a great ecosystem surrounding it, and Steam is one of the very best for gaming that actually seems to respect its users.
How do you plan to be better than Steam? This is the question that this product fails to answer. If it doesn’t come up with a truly impressive answer soon, it’s dead on arrival.
My money is on no one remembering this device after six months.
How do you plan to be better than Steam?
Presumably you mean SteamOS. That could be answered simply with "it plays more games" and "Game Pass".
Never bought into game pass. It's also a subscription and prices are subject to change at any time, and be tiered differently, and all that. It might even just end up streaming everything. I'm not a fan of other of those. I'm out.
Never bought into game pass
That's cool. I didn't either. But 35 million other people did.
It's also a subscription and prices are subject to change at any time
You can also cancel it at any time.
Perhaps I’m making a wrong assumption that Microsoft is trying to build some sort of PC compatible gaming store around the device that I see as an inevitable failure. Maybe it will be something completely different and open.
And of course, just because I fail to understand the goal of this device doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have one with merit. It still got half the year to build up hype targeting a 2025 holiday season release.
We already have Windows handhelds. There’s some comparisons here with Windows phone and the smart phone OS industry. If it is to be successful that’s quite the uphill battle being late to the game.
Microsoft is trying to build some sort of PC compatible gaming store
They already have one. It's called XBOX.
We already have Windows handhelds
And they're atrocious.
The goal is to have a Windows OS that is actually usable on handhelds with native controller navigation an UI for controllers. You will still be able to use Steam, Battlenet, Epic, etc...
A steam deck already plays gamepass, and if you install windows on the deck, it will the few windows-only PC games that SteamOS cant.
and if you install windows
Ew. No one is doing that.
Yeah it can be a hassle, but is it such a hassle people would rather buy this specific handheld to play the handful of multiplayer games a steamdeck cant?
Not to mention theyre mainly esports titles that people prefer not to play on an underpowered handheld anyways...
I mean it's partly that it's a hassle but it's mostly that it's a shit experience that nobody wants.
This thing, in theory, gives them the games they want without the shitty experience that is Windows.
I mean if they really nail the UI, and i mean REALLY nail it(which involves nailing game/launcher compatibility as well)...
Then maybe this handheld will forge the way for a new windows gaming OS.
But even then without an Xbox game compatibility layer, they arent going to convert any steam users at all.
They've already converted thousands of users without it.
What do you mean? Gamepass users? You can use gamepass on ANY device, including steamdeck. Idk if paying another $500-$1000 usd is worth it for most people to have a slightly more convenient gamepass handheld experience.
You can use gamepass on ANY device
We're going around in circles. We've already been over this.
This looks like Microsoft committed exactly one toe to testing the water.
...but will it have AI? I mean truly random AI gimmick like Pilot/Cortana whatever. People expected their HMPC for gaming insanely performing and slick, with no bloatware at all... but only Microsoft knows what you all need is some company AI thing that drain processing power to interact with Microsoft servers and spy on you. Nobody knows better than Microsoft how to Zune their way in a new entertainment industry