There are plenty of supposed Steam Deck killers available in the portable gaming space, from the Asus ROG Ally to the Lenovo Legion Go and all the Ayaneo and ONEXPLAYER devices in between. But none of them have managed to outright slay the dragon that is the mighty Steam Deck yet.
Yeah, I really can’t figure out why valve isn’t working harder on making SteamOS available to other handheld PCs.
The Steam Deck is sold at a loss, but all the benefits Valve gets from the Steam Deck have to do with it’s OS. It’s both clearing a path for non windows gaming PCs (it’s dangerous to let a single rival company like Microsoft completely control your market), and while the deck allows you to install non-steam games, it’s much easier to stick to Steam games.
So it would seem to me that putting SteamOS on other devices would be a unanimous victory for Valve, getting all the benefits of the Deck without losing money up-front by subsidizing the hardware.
Friend, you are legally allowed to install SteamOS on any device you want.
Yes, but my personal determination to put Linux on every device I own isn’t going to have an impact on market share and convince gamers that they don’t need windows.
Handheld PCs are a growing market and Valve has (had?) a chance to make SteamOS the handheld gaming OS.
I assume it’s not “ready” yet for whatever reason