Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Microsoft Finally Gets It”.
Why don’t we jump into Microsoft could be working on a Windows handheld mode for steam Deco likes? This is super exciting, not because I want the steam deck to fail or because I want Steam OS to see any less development, not because I think that Windows is an alternative to Steam OS or that I that I want it to become this easier path. Now blah blah blah none of those things, but because competition is good. Valve’S competition in the space lit a fire under Microsoft and we shouldn’t let valve run unopposed either I mean look how little Innovation there was in Steam until EA and Ubisoft basically said. Look we’re going to take our ball and we’re going to go home well valve innovated. Would they have done it anyway? I don’t know.
Maybe maybe not though so. This is exciting. Prolific, Microsoft, leaker walking cat shared two videos on Twitter that were taken from a pitch for an internal Microsoft, hackathon Project showcasing a Windows handheld mode. The pitch acknowledges that the handheld PC market is growing thanks to a device called the steam deck.
This is a direct quote and shows prototype features that would make Windows easier to use on such devices such as optimizing. The onboarding experience, which right now is very clutchy cross-platform, a cross-platform game launcher built right into windows. Are we going back to the games folder from Vista, because I actually down I liked it? It was kind of awesome. It was good.
I complained very recently on a wancho about how it’s it’s kind of annoying right now about how everything is trying to be your games, launcher and like. I would actually just prefer one of them and, if Microsoft had stuck with it, like one of the things that it did, was it pushed game developers to move their save games to one place. So, instead of having it sometimes being an app data, roaming and sometimes being in program files and the the game, folder and sometimes being in my games and sometimes just just being in my documents like men, game developers have never been able to decide where your saves Go so Microsoft, one of the good things they did with Vista and with the games folder was they Consolidated? It all went in one place so when I had to reformat or whatever else, because Cloud saves weren’t as much of a thing, it was one folder that I dragged and it was good to and it was good to go right.
Um now you got to deal with like, is it in app data or is it saved somewhere else? Oh man Cloud saves are both a blessing and a curse? I set my kids up to play. It takes two um in the car at one point and they were like hey what happened to our game. I was like, I don’t know. Oh yeah, it turns out, it takes two just doesn’t Cloud save on Steam, it’s like just not supported, and I saw this. I saw this really awful uh video on.
I don’t know if it was Tick, Tock or something anyway. Someone was someone was talking about how their Animal Crossing uh saved. They had like 500 hours in Animal Crossing and their switch got corrupted during an update and it’s gone even though they do pay Nintendo for their stupid hostage. Taking Cloud save feature, Nintendo was just like: oh yeah, you have to manually enable Animal Crossing saves because they’re big.
This is a paid service. Nintendo, it’s paid, that’s actually so brutal. I I had seen like people were upset about Animal Crossing safes, but I didn’t know why that’s so brutal.
This is something it’s actually like. Almost unbelievable levels of of brutal, I’m just hating your customers, yeah like what the oh man, oh you mentioned when talking about the Mario movie you’re like yup, it’s good, clean fun like Nintendo. It sucks that Nintendo has to come with this incredibly ugly downside. All the time yep it’s like what it wouldn’t be that hard to just be like. Do they never go on discount, yeah sure, but like that is good. You can back up your save to an SD card for no charge, because the SD card slot is right. There on the console, and why wouldn’t we let you do that that kind of stuff right like it seems like it would make sense for the brand, but they just they just can’t they just have to be bottles, and it’s like man, why? I don’t know I I do have to bring back. I don’t know if you mentioned this sorry, I’ve been I’ve been working on something um, but the this was a hackathon project right so like I wouldn’t take this as a like they’re working on it, but there’s other cool ideas, but like driver handling, uh touch keyboard Controller navigation of keyboard and common Windows elements like task view, uh, controller support outside of steam and more like Luke says this is no guarantee, but the Microsoft employees who made the presentation seem passionate about it, saying that windows and Xbox app users deserve this and need This they’re so right how have Windows and Xbox not merged more yeah they’re, even doing a lot of the things right, but not a hundred percent of the way, and these hackathons are often positioned to be able to find projects like this. So it is very possible that this does get done.
I just don’t want people being like. Oh, this is coming cool because it’s not necessarily coming um. There’S no word on whether they’ve started any kind of development on the project, but as PC World points out, they’d be kind of dumb not to with the proliferation of these devices and with The Gap that valve’s inertia seems to have left in the market. The Rog Ally is outstanding, yeah. The amount of time that I’ve spent with it now is much more than the last time I talked about it and, like I was just um. It’S replaced. This theme deck for you, Yvonne and I were having one of our one of our home meetings because she can never talk to me at work because no one will let her uh. So she it’s very hard to get a meeting with you yeah.
So she it’s actually like a battle every time, so anyway, she had a whole bunch of stuff in her inbox. That was tagged discussed with Linus, and I was just chilling on the floor in the computer room playing Vampire survivors on the Rog Ally, with it being completely dead, silent in the power saving mode, because it’s not a super demanding game, and I mean it’s obviously a Pretty, like brain turned off kind of game, just like essentially having a meeting yeah. It runs hot, so smooth 120 hertz, it’s way more powerful than the steam way way more powerful, and it’s not going to be the only one. Is it cool to have a Computing device where you had a very significant performance jump that was noticeable yeah because I feel like it hasn’t super been a thing for a while, but I I recognized only just now, but I’ve had this feeling the whole time you’ve Been talking about it that there’s like a different level of excitement, because this like super perceivable jump in performance, is not so much of a thing.
No lately. No, it’s not it’s twice as fast yeah and that’s like that’s crazy, and it is still a thing. It is still a thing um and like if, if an SSD was twice as fast right now it wouldn’t matter most users are not going to notice, but okay, so that’s exactly the thing there are still big upgrades. The 4090 is an enormous upgrade over the 3090.. For 1600 US Dollars yeah, starting at starting at for a single component of your computer, but here we’re talking about, I hope, okay, I hope we’re talking about a device that is under or around a grand. Yes, yes, it’s a complete experience. It’S not an add-in board that you put in another thing: yeah that also costs a lot of money right and also like needs its own level of heightened support, because you need like a crazy power supply and exactly solid Cooling and all this other kind of stuff. Exactly no I’m I’m I’m I’m jazzed and don’t imagine for a second that if Asus is successful with the Rog Ally that you’re not going to see other other PC manufacturers chime in because this is something I was trying to figure out. It’S like who the heck is Aya Neo, who is One X player? Who is you know uh GPD like who? Who are these guys um, and I I know who they are like? I you know, have communicated with them. I understand who they are especially very directly, but my point was that they are not Asus they’re, not major players, they are not MSI gigabyte and if these guys can get to Market, if the minimum order quantities and the relationship building with the amds or the intels Of the world is so relatively easy. Absolutely nothing would prevent a manufacturer with the expertise of an Asus MSI gigabyte, Acer, uh dell, whoever nothing would prevent them from coming out with one okay. Do you think this is going to be? Let’S go it’s a laptop, but it doesn’t sure: do you think it’s gon na be bad for the gpd’s, ineos, ETC of the world.
Yeah that sucks hold on they still have an opportunity to maintain their niche. Gpd is the only one who really takes the keyboard seriously. Okay, so there’s there’s still room for them: um Aya Neo. They were doing some really cool things with Aya space, so their their skin, slash, launcher, uh, some really cool ideas, uh their overlay, really cool ideas. There for being able to uh kind of like the steam deck right, adjust your brightness and your volume and your power profile and whatever else, while you’re in game uh, really cool ideas there I feel like compared to. I don’t know six eight months ago. It’S just kind of more bloated and buggy and hasn’t really added anything useful for me, and so, if they can really do a great job of that and make that supplementary to anything that Microsoft builds into Windows. I think it could be really good, like I uh at their.
I anneal at their best, has had way better, Auto, switching of uh joy to Mouse and then switching into controller mode as you launch games and then go back to the Windows desktop. But then it got really bad around the time Windows 11 launched, which I would have to assume, is something to do with Microsoft. Thank you very much, but I don’t know that for sure, whereas Asus right now, it’s pretty rough, I basically just use the touchscreen right like it sucks like they have a toggle for it, but as far as I can tell it doesn’t work and there’s there’s room For these come there’s absolutely room for these companies to have Acquisitions happen. You you even mentioned, like there’s all these major players in the space that could do it, but there’s like software advantages or whatever that these small companies have that’s exactly why those things happen.
Yeah 100, but then, if I’m, I, I don’t think it would, though, like I’m thinking everything I know about MSI and their product development, oh, I don’t think MSI would do it they’d just be like no we’ll do it ourselves and it doesn’t matter if it’s crappy, But like Alienware, okay would build it themselves and it would be less crappy, but then MSI yeah, like dang. What is it about Hardware, companies and just being utterly unable to do software? It’S actually like. I don’t find that there’s a ton of companies that can do both it’s actually kind of difficult to cross over yeah they’re like.
Why is Apple. You know the first to cross a trillion dollar evaluation yeah because they can do both it’s hard. Yeah Intel software is like they’re consumer facing software is kind of janky talk about the The Arc stuff yeah yeah like there’s. Definitely software things that I’m pretty sure Intel does pretty well, like my understanding, is a lot of their like compiler stuff is very robust. A lot of their like hardcore behind the scenes type of stuff is pretty solid, a lot of their user-facing stuff.
The uis look like they’re from the early 2000s um, whatever he was even that’s when they work art control or whatever was a hot pile of garbage. Yeah um, I don’t know they feel extremely, not modern on the user side or completely broken in regards to when you look at like a software company like Facebook trying to do Hardware, it’s like oh portal, yeah like it’s, it’s actually pretty hard to cross. I mean they technically do Hardware now, but they acquired Oculus and what, if they realistically launched as meta like developed and launched? Okay, so I mean yeah they’ve done headsets, they still yeah, but they still had a lot of the Oculus team when they developed. You know Rift s or when they developed quest one. Oh, I see um, so the pro is like the only yeah yeah and it’s a flop.
As far as I can tell that, doesn’t it’s not a bad device, but it’s not commercially viable someone’s saying their driver support is normally amazing. Yeah, like the the behind the scenes stuff from Intel is, is traditionally quite good. Yeah, oh well, 100, give them that it’s more, the the user-facing stuff .