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It's intended to run Windows Games (some have said, "They're not Windows Games they're PC games!", but according to Valve and Proton, they're Windows games: "Proton is a new tool released by Valve Software that has been integrated with Steam Play to make playing Windows games on Linux as simple as hitting the Play button within Steam." from ). Richard, I agree with your reasoning, but all the more reason that Windows Central should not promote this product. Let Valve do its own thing with Steam Deck, and hopefully, it'll be tremendous. Nevertheless, if you want a gaming handheld that runs Windows, you're better off just buying one in the first place. Part of that is probably the Windows license, but more likely since these are small companies they're not building at the scale Valve is shooting for, so getting the cost down is more difficult. What they also have in common is that they're quite a bit more expensive than the Steam Deck, or at least, the lower two spec Steam Decks. These all run Windows out of the box with drivers and firmware and whatnot all optimized properly. It doesn't bother with a keyboard, so personally, I'm not sure how much I'd enjoy navigating it, but it's a phenomenal thing and you can buy it right now. There are others out there, too, and on a hardware front, the Aya Neo is closer to the Steam Deck as it uses AMD for the CPU and graphics which makes it a potent little handheld. There are already Windows-based gaming handhelds on sale
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Be honest, how many times has a Windows update broken something on your PC that you've been quite cross about? Is it really worth the effort and the potential trouble just because you "prefer Windows?" You won't get support on Windows, and there's no guarantee what your experience would even be. Valve will be supporting SteamOS on the Steam Deck, continually making it better, and working in tandem with the hardware it had custom designed. And by all accounts Valve is still pushing as hard as it can to make Proton work with everything on Steam, including that pesky anti-cheat. And for most people what it runs underneath doesn't mean a thing so long as their games work. Having total control over the software experience gives Valve what it needs to make sure that using a Steam Deck doesn't suck.Īs a consumer product that's what matters the most.
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Valve is responsible only for making that experience as good as it can be, and the simple truth is that Windows doesn't offer the flexibility needed to turn Steam Deck into a proper games console. Source: Valve (Image credit: Source: Valve)
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