It makes sense as a creator of such a device that if you have the knowledge in your team to do it, running Windows on it is a good proposition to buyers. It's not like they couldn't install Linux on it if they want to, but to off-the-shelf buyers Windows is much better sales pitch.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The user experience is atrocious though.

There are a few games I can't play on my steam deck yet but I'd much rather have its great, functional ui over those few games that I could just play on pc instead.

[–] Carighan 3 points 1 year ago

Oh definitely. I would not say atrocious (seen far worse, like every time I have to interact with the weird stuff SAP or Oracle put out as software), but it's not good for a semi-controller-semi-touchscreen device.

Definitely usable OTOH.

Personally I would still go for a Steam Deck right now if I had to pick one, but more competition is good, and right now I'm personally not looking for a portable gaming PC anyways as my Switch has enough games I still need to play.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

The off the shelf user experience is so much worse though, it doesn't feel like a finished user ready product if you're having to navigate windows UI on a tiny screen with a thumbstick mouse.

Not to mention that running windows ruins the ability to play low power games at low power draws. A game like Stardew on the steam deck draws 5-7w, while the ROG Ally pulls about 15-17w to run it with the same settings. Disabling everything you can through task manager can reduce that power usage difference by maybe half, but there's still a lot of unnecessary power draw just from it running windows.