A few years ago, pseudo-experts said that portable consoles were dead. More than 100 million Nintendo Switches later, and the fact that the Steam Deck is one of the most beloved devices in recent years, have sent these people back to their holes. Well, with the appearance of recent clones of the Valve console, from Microsoft they have not wanted to be left behind and have decided start developing your version of Windows for Steam Deck and similar devices.
Microsoft’s core business is selling Windows licenses to computer manufacturers or directly to end users to install on their systems. It is a business model where there are no exaggerated hardware costs that exist with Xbox and the nightmare of having to launch a portable console, which would also cannibalize resources with the desktop console and the interest in users.
Why is Microsoft developing Windows for the Steam Deck?
Precisely Valve hit the nail on the head by creating a portable console, Steam Deck, based on PC hardware and compatible with PC games. The problem? This runs on a version of SteamOS that plays Windows games through the Proton interpreter, and therefore Microsoft doesn’t see a penny. While we can install Windows on such devices, it is the full version, which has a host of features that are counterproductive for a battery-powered device and is not as streamlined as Valve’s system software.
From here we have already talked about trimmed versions of Windows, which keep the basics of the operating system in order to cut processing and memory requirements. Well, apparently those from Redmond would be working on a Handheld mode of their operating system, which would allow the use of Windows for Steam Deck and other similar devices. Let’s not forget that the Valve system is still a PC where we can optionally run any operating system.
Changes compared to the standard version of Windows
https://t.co/RdSGMmhgBd https://t.co/OWiw0f2k2v
April 13, 2023 • 04:27
The idea of the project is to solve some problems that the use of the standard version of Windows 10 or 11 brings with it in a Steam Deck or similar. Things like now:
- Dar fully supports all game distribution platforms on PC and not just Steam in order to have full access to system controls.
- Make the games run automatically in the screen configuration of our PC in the form of a portable console.
- The Steam Deck, like the consoles, has a single unified memory pool, many Windows games don’t get along with that.
- Improve navigation through Windows from typical console controls. For example, they claim to make the taskbar floating and larger.
At the moment they intend to implement these changes. Should we pay for them? We don’t know, but it tells us that Microsoft’s goal is none other than installing Windows for Steam Deck so that we can subscribe to GamePass in its PC version. In any case, it was something that was really necessary because the market needs competition and the lack of a decent version of Windows for PC-based portable consoles was already a drag.
