While we sadly didn’t get our hands on Valve’s upcoming portable PC, the Steam Deck, Xbox’s Commander in Chief Phil Spencer, did. Who took the time from his hectic gaming sessions to let us all know that he’s enjoying the powerful portable PC via Twitter. I mean, can you blame him?
While the Steam Deck is loaded with a Linux OS, you’re able to swap the OS with Windows if you want and play games that way. However, in this instance, Phil Spencer was using the native web browser in SteamOS, and apparently, it works very well. In fact, he was able to play several Xbox games via xCloud, Xbox’s cloud gaming service bundled with Xbox Game Pass.
Was @valvesoftware this week talking w/ Scott, Erik, Gabe about Steam Deck. After having mine most of the week I can say it's a really nice device. Games with me on the go, screen size, controls all great. Playing Halo and Age feels good, xCloud works well. Congrats SD team. pic.twitter.com/q4hWBvkk85
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) August 13, 2021
Being able to play Xbox games on the Steam Deck out of the box sounds like a deal to me. No swapping the OS, no custom stuff; load the web browser, and away we go. That’s going to be a huge selling point that Valve may not even have considered. Or maybe they did.
As for the Steam Deck, many outlets and YouTube channels recently released their impressions of the device. Mostly positive, with a few observations tossed in; give those a look over in our Steam Deck impressions round-up.
The Steam Deck isn’t slated to be released until 2022 and will come in three different variants: 64GB, 256GB, and 512GB. I’ve already pre-ordered the 256GB version, but now that I think about it, perhaps the 512GB would have been the way to go wiht the extra storage and anti-glare etched screen. I wonder if it’s too late to make a change to my order and not get pushed back further on the waiting list.
