This will probably be the biggest competition the Steam Deck has within the handheld PC space.
Most noteworthy is that windows is finally focusing on providing a decent handheld experience, including booting straight to a controller friendly interface, and reducing background processes for better fps and battery.
Edit: The handheld Xbox UI will.come to all windows PCs, but it’s not clear if the reduced performance bloat version will be available. It sounds like only Xbox branded devices may get the full benefit of optimized windows.
It’s also the ugliest handheld PC yet (imo), but I can appreciate that they’re pushing for comfort over looks.
I dunno, I kind of believe them when they claim they seriously debloated Windows. I bet they actually used SteamOS benchmarks to sway the higher ups to be allowed to do this. It will be interesting to see benchmarks when this thing is released.
Although I also believe that they would lock down the bootloader. And not release this mode to the general public. They haven’t been very lenient with the media people testing these things. They weren’t even allowed make their own videos of the interface or games running on them.
I mean, I can’t of course prove anything, but uh.
I used to work for MSFT.
I very much doubt thet are capable of meaningfully streamlining Windows.
And uh also no, no, the SteamOS Benchmarks came out less than a week before this announcement.
This announcement means they have been working on this project for a year or so, at least, and just haven’t publically mentioned anything definitive untill now.
They already have the whole thing designed and agreements worked out with all the mfg partners involved.
You don’t do a public announcement for a release in a few months unless you’ve got the assembly line and logistics systems in place ready to start cranking these things out after maybe a few more weeks of minor touchups.
You don’t just have a single big meeting and then BLAM! That is not how this works.
Most likely, around the time the SteamDeck OLED came out, as in you can buy one now, came out… thats around the time MSFT had at least some higher ups and teams start brainstorming making their own, and then at some point about a year ago, they decided to actually do it.
I’m pretty sure that this “streamlined, gaming-first” development team will last right up to the moment they come into conflict with any other corporate goal.
You’re not doing AI-first? You’re not injecting Bing into every experience? Where are all the ads? Oops, so sorry, your role has been made redundant.
Pretty much exactly.
There are so, so many tech bros who build their identity around not being replacable… when in fact, they are.
Then their identity collapses and they become crypto bros, some other kind of obvious start-up scammers…
I meant that they maybe used SteamOS (or a similar distribution) on whatever prototype they had to make some benchmarks to compare against stock Windows or their own Windows build.
But you seem to have better insight into the way they work.
Sorry, I edited in more details after you replied.
But uh yeah, as you yourself have said… MSFT is very good at being secretive and opaque… even internally, there is a massive culture of compartmentalizing information, to say nothing of outward facing info.
I would say that untill independent reviewers get their hands on these things to do teardowns and benchmarks, trust nothing, all their claims are just marketing BS.
Im not saying this version of Windows won’t be better than mainline Windows, in terms of game performance.
I am saying I’ll eat a sock if it ends up being even as efficient as SteamOS or Bazzite in a same hardware same game same settings frame rate test of 20ish modern games.