Valve puts up a Steam Deck trailer and the head of Xbox seems to really like it

QuoteIt doesn't mention SteamOS, Proton or anything Linux related but simply mentions it runs a "new version of Steam" and ends by telling people to reserve now.

That is probably the right amount of information for the general public. They don't care how games run, they only care if they do.

Given Phil Spencer is probably the reason MS didn't back Vulkan but pushed DX12 lock-in instead, it's interesting that he has some positive comments about Steam Deck which relies on breaking that very lock-in.

Quoting: gradyvuckovic

QuoteIt doesn't mention SteamOS, Proton or anything Linux related but simply mentions it runs a "new version of Steam" and ends by telling people to reserve now.

That is probably the right amount of information for the general public. They don't care how games run, they only care if they do.

This is exactly the right way to put it. And as often with new versions of software, some backwards-incompatibilities are to be expected, so it should be easier to tell people to wait indefinitely while it's being worked on. It will be interesting to see if games start getting negative reviews for not running on steam deck, like they now do if they don't work on windows 10.

Quoting: ShmerlGiven Phil Spencer is probably the reason MS didn't back Vulkan but pushed DX12 lock-in instead,

Not really. DX12 was a thing before he got put in charge of Xbox, and Xbox being a thing to push DirectX ("DirectX box") was a thing long before he was in charge.

Quoteit's interesting that he has some positive comments about Steam Deck which relies on breaking that very lock-in.

It's the only good move. If they say nothing about the new gaming hotness then they look out of touch with gaming. If they say something negative about their competitor then they make themselves look bad and give their competitor good publicity. By saying something positive they have an opportunity to cast themselves as the good guys while promoting their own product. Sweeney did exactly the same thing.

Quoting: gradyvuckovic

QuoteIt doesn't mention SteamOS, Proton or anything Linux related but simply mentions it runs a "new version of Steam" and ends by telling people to reserve now.

That is probably the right amount of information for the general public. They don't care how games run, they only care if they do.

Not to mention that it works far better as a marketing strategy to precede a new and totally unknown thing with a real-time showcase of how good it is compared to the existing solutions, instead of trying to convince people to trust you and change their habits based only on the potential that this new unknown thing will turn out to be good.

I can't count* the times I've had people asking me to switch them to Linux after watching me working on my PC and liking what they saw, compared to the times I was successful in convincing someone to switch to Linux because "it's better, you'll see".

(*OK, actually I can count the times because they're really not that many, but hopefully you get my drift :P)

Quoting: CatKillerIf they say something negative about their competitor then they make themselves look bad and give their competitor good publicity. By saying something positive they have an opportunity to cast themselves as the good guys while promoting their own product. Sweeney did exactly the same thing.

Valve have been working with MS to ensure windows runs smoothly on the deck & that TPM issues are sorted out. Someone said on the initial deck thread that windows 11 won't work on the steam deck because the screen is too small, but that doesn't appear to be the case now. So Im not sure competitor works in this instance.

Xcloud on the deck ? The product here is windows 11 compatibility on the steam deck.

QuoteIt doesn't mention SteamOS, Proton or anything Linux related but simply mentions it runs a "new version of Steam"

Spoiler, click me

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Jokes apart, I understand that most users don't know nor care about the system it's running inside deck, only if the games are running and if they can install third party apps on it (Netflix/spotify/whatever).

Also "Linux" is still a scary word for a lot of people who never used (or tried and didn't work as their intended) so it's good to omit this kind of information for now until steam deck hopefully establish as a "good console" among the mainstream, and giving something familiar to Windows to not scare non technical users (hence why KDE as default in desktop mode)

Quoting: CatKillerNot really. DX12 was a thing before he got put in charge of Xbox, and Xbox being a thing to push DirectX ("DirectX box") was a thing long before he was in charge.

He became the head Xbox / gaming division in MS in 2014. That's before Vulkan was even announced and during the important period when Mantle was presented by AMD to the industry as a prototype design of a common GPU API. So he totally was in charge of making the decision whether to collaborate or to push lock-in. And we know what MS did.

Even if you say someone else (shortly) before him decided to make DX12 from Mantle, he totally could scrap that and make MS collaborate with Khronos on Vulkan which was still in development phase. He didn't.


Last edited by Shmerl on 15 August 2021 at 4:56 pm UTC

so they gave him acess for an whole week while journalists had 1 hour with the device?

valve was quite smarth in only mentioning "it can play steam games" this time.
if everyone purchased with this goal, people would be less likely to install windows on it.