Like how to get publicity when you’re using windows media, or delete all non subscription software from the system, or how to make the CPU run at 15% when idle(oh no it’s already a windows 10 feature)…
They don’t; there was an internal tech demo that never went anywhere but was spread around online a few months ago with a bunch of misinformation that Microsoft was preparing to fight the Steam Deck head on.
Man, everyones jumping in onto the handheld gaming PC segment. Pretty cool. Hopefully it will light a fire under Nintendo’s butt to do better with its hardware.
Yet the sales figures show Nintendo have amazing sales.
PS2 - 159 million.
Nintendo DS - 154.02 million.
Nintendo switch - 125.62 million
Gameboy/ Gameboy colour - 118.69 million
PS4 - 117.2 million.
3 out of the 5 top sales belong to Nintendo. So regardless of hardware, Nintendo is a loved gaming system.
Whereas Xbox is number 9 on that list with the 360 at 85 million. So the console war seems to be between Nintendo and Sony at this point.
I think Nintendo knows it’s market pretty well. I have both a switch and a steam deck andO have a lot of the same games on each. The deck is obviously the higher power unit. I got it just a short time ago to try to play through my backlog, although to be honest I’ve logged more hours on new purchases like Stray and Dredge. It’s a good system.
The switch outshines it in a couple of places, though. First, they got the form factor - specifically the size and weight - better than steam did. It’s smaller and lighter, and I think the battery lasts longer. More importantly, the games that run on the switch were made for it. There’s no squinting at tiny fonts or trying to figure whether and how to use the trackpad to control the mouse bits. If it’s on the switch, I can be pretty sure it is playable on the switch. I’m still getting used to the issues with scaling down the desktop experience to a deck, but already I’m thinking I won’t be playing a lot of cyberpunk without booking up a mouse, keyboard, and monitor.
In short, the deck and windows handhelds need to perform at the level of a (low end) desktop (because they’re playing desktop games) as well as worry about scaling and transforming the UI. The switch doesn’t have that problem, and the trade off is a more limited (but still extensive) library.
The switch is my first Nintendo device since the NES, and the first party content isn’t what made me finally try it. I like playing games like Diablo on it. I think Nintendo, by owning the entire stack, can serve up a better and more curated experience. If I didn’t have a library of a couple hundred steam games that I’ve never played, I’d probably not have considered getting the deck. I am enjoying it, and some games are phenomenal, but from a performance-that-actually-impacts-the-user perspective, Nintendo might just come out on top.
If this form factor is here to stay, and hopefully it is, Microsoft will probably adapt Windows to it (also hopefully). SteamOS is very good though, can manufacturers not just use that?
As long as you don’t use it for Office, Microsoft isn’t going to spend money on it. Their cash cow is M365 and Azure, they don’t even care when every single gamer pirates their OS.
Eh, this and the Ally are cash grabs, I doubt they intend to spend the money needed to support custom software long-term. They’ll just hope that Windows updates don’t mess it up and if they do, they’ll blame Microsoft.
These devices are honestly quite fast, the overhead is similar to the overhead on an entry level gaming PC (to be fair, that is still a substantial overhead, but people accept it)
I second this. I’m planning to start switching my devices from Windows to Linux in a couple of weeks due to good experience I’ve had with the Steam Deck
All these new handhelds with windows seem to have completely forgot how much of a failure windows has been on mobiles in the past (other than laptops and such). I know windows mobile was a whole different ui but isn’t windows 10/11 even worse to use on small screens like this?
I really hope valve starts supporting steamOS for devices other than the deck soon so we can have the full deck experience including all the tweakable settings.
How is the government going to handle the use of public computers if Microsoft is getting out of Russia? I mean, I’m sure they already have a lot of pirated copies and old versions of Windows, as any (at least third world) country does, but at some point I don’t see any option to either pirate every copy of Windows or start using Linux.
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