Six ways Microsoft's portable Xbox could be a Steam Deck killer

Maybe I am reading this wrong - it feels like people want this to be a Steam Deck competitor? Like the whole 'I'm a PC, run me in two modes and tinker around' thing. Why? They just need to serve the existing user bases of their respective platform libraries.

Especially the implication that this may be running Windows - It'd make more sense for this to be running Xbox its system and not Windows, so people could play their library of existing Xbox games, including backwards compatible games. I have a Series X and that's what I would want it to do, as some of the best games are stuck on OG/360!

People who have an existing game library on PC would have it on Steam anyway - and not the Microsoft Store.

An amusing list. Could have named it "table stakes for a portable gaming machine." Many of the items are essentially things the deck is doing remarkably well.

Seriously, what makes any of this list a thing that would make a better product? Reads as a critique of the steam deck, but that seems to also hit all of these notes?

And hard to really get excited on this. Microsoft's track record with XBox has largely been to buy a publisher to get exclusives, no?

I get some folks don't like Linux. I don't get wanting Windows. It isn't as bad as Android, but that is a low bar.

Good stuff, but it's worth mentioning that the Xbox itself runs a custom version of Windows that solves all of the UI and device management issues mentioned here. (Surely no one thought it ran some other OS, did they?)

I think it's safe to say that MS worked out all their console concerns in Windows a long time ago, which is what makes it easy for them to let a partner ship portable hardware and make it a real Xbox in all the ways the author wants.

I'll definitely be getting one.