This is why I don't support devices like the ally. I don't want to give Microsoft another platform to get a monopoly over.
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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Yeah, I thought about getting the Ally, buying the Steam Deck's the way to go. Now if only Linux get a bigger market share and more apps, that'd be great.
Steam itself is a proprietary, DRM-ridden quasi-monopoly. Supporting Valve over Microsoft doesn't make much sense. They're both bad.
You are technically correct, but Valve is a very "consumer first" company. This of course is no guarantee they'll always be "good", but Valve has earned and maintained my trust over the years and I trust them more than any other company I can think of. Far and away orders of magnitude more than Microsoft.
Valve popularised lootboxes and allowed gambling with marketplace items for quite a along time. Doesn't sound very consumer first to me.
That's a good point. I've never participated in that so it didn't really factor into my opinion of them. In every way I've interacted with the company they have been excellent.
I like them because they make niche products that may not have mainstream appeal, but that their customers love (steam link, steam controller, valve index, steam deck). They have excellent customer support and always do more than they have to:
- My GF lost the power adapter to her steam link and asked how to buy a new one, they just sent her an entire replacement device since they were stopping production anyway
- One of my Index lighthouses died and I had bought it used from a guy since they didn't sell them in my country yet. No questions, they sent me a new one
- When they were releasing Half Life Alex they just checked if you'd ever had an index connected to your PC and if so they gave you a copy. No asking for proof of purchase or redeeming codes that expire.
I could go on, but yeah to me they are pushing Linux forward, making hardware that excites me, have reasonable prices, and great service. So I like them.
I mean... if somebody has a gaming storefront monopoly in Windows it certainly isn't Microsoft. Concern about monopolistic practices is a great catch-22 between the OS dominance of Windows or the platform dominance of Steam, and I'm about as concerned about both.
FWIW, I have both a Steam Deck and a GPD Windows handheld and, being entirely agnostic about that entire conversation I default to my GPD Win 4, because of ergonomics, usability and compatibility concerns, in that order.
The biggest issue with all these Steam Deck rivals is Windows. Why has no one else pushed out a proper handheld running a Linux distro?
I don't think folks realise how much effort and investment Valve has put into making Linux a viable gaming alternative for modern-ish games.
Most distributors use Windows because it is easy to install and setup for gaming. Is it perfect? No. But any vendor can pay Microsoft and get a viable OS for gaming.
Linux will need a lot of custom graphics card drivers and a lot of tweaking (think power as well as graphical features, memory, CPU etc) to get the optimum performance. Most OSes out of the box have OKish performance for gaming, which is OK for any hobbyist but would be a disaster for a consumer product.
And before Valve came along, Proton wasn't even a thing. Proton is now a thing, and the way Steam utilises it makes it effortless, but it will need a fair bit of custom args to get it working well.
Each of these things separately can be quite painful in its own right, but altogether it would be a headache for any company not well versed in Linux. Not only that, but having to provide customer support for a Linux OS would put the fear in most companies.
I would imagine most vendors would just slap Windows on their machine and be like "you know what to do with this" and let them go nuts.
Give me a true suspension for any game cowards.
I mean, it certainly looks nicer. At least they're thinking about ways to make the experience better, for those that use it.
I'm still really happy with SteamOS, the only real downside is that newer AAA games are simply too demanding. Not so much of a problem on the desktop, but certain games just look rough and run at sub-30 fps.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Microsoft has started testing new updates to its Xbox app on Windows 11 that improve the experience on handheld devices and smaller screens.
In an Xbox test app released earlier this week, Microsoft has introduced a new compact mode that greatly reduces the sidebar on the left-hand side.
(tldr: 3 sentences skipped)
Early “Windows handheld mode” concepts leaked from a hackathon project inside Microsoft earlier this year, including a floating taskbar, an improved game launcher, and changes to the Xbox app.
This gaming shell was simply a prototype, built before devices like the ROG Ally and Lenovo’s Legion Go were announced.
Asus’ ROG Ally is now emerging as the portable Xbox for PC Game Pass.
(tldr: 2 sentences skipped)
“We are focused on making the Xbox and GP experience great on devices like the Ally ... More to do,” admitted Spencer in a tweet in July.
(tldr: 2 sentences skipped)
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