Xbox boss Phil Spencer spent some time at Valve to test out the Steam Deck and confirmed that Game Pass and xCloud game streaming work perfectly on the Steam Deck.
I like Phil Spencer, man. The dude's a real gamer and really trying to connect gamers and unify us. Is he doing it because the PlayStation was whooping the Xbox so bad? Maybe. Is it easier to say "can't we all be friends", when your product was bullied for over a decade? Definitely. Would he not be the unifier if Xbox dominated the market? Possibly. Does any of this matter? Nah.
Fact is: the man loves video games and bringing them to as many platforms as possible. xCloud, and by extension, Game Pass, is doing exactly that: Streaming games without boundaries (if you wanna use that as a slogan, hit me up Spence, I'm good for it).
Phil Spencer Confirms Game Pass xCloud Work on Steam Deck
Was @valvesoftware this week talking w/ Scott, Erik, Gabe about Steam Deck. After having mine most of the week I can say it's a really nice device. Games with me on the go, screen size, controls all great. Playing Halo and Age feels good, xCloud works well. Congrats SD team. pic.twitter.com/q4hWBvkk85
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) August 13, 2021
There it is. The testimonial of all testimonials. A man speaking on another man's product and praising it without agenda. Love it. Also love that they're still trynna push the name xCloud for whatever reason, when Game Pass is infinitely better and already used by everyone. In case you didn't know: Game Pass is the entire subscription library, which is also downloadable to play offline, and xCloud refers to streaming the library via cloud services. It's a super unnecessarily complicated nomenclature (Editor: the hell does that even mean?), which... is exactly what Xbox is all about, so no surprises there.
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Naming detours aside: Halo works, Age of Empires works, and that just about covers the entire realm of controls in gaming – touch-pad based strategy and reaction-heavy first-person shooters. Interestingly, people that didn't get to test the Steam Deck were complaining about the handling, yet everybody who's ever tested it, says it handles really well. Seems like people on the internet are quick to jump to conclusions. Huh... who would've thought...
This all sets the Steam Deck up to be the handheld device for streaming games. With streaming certainly only becoming more prominent in the near future, it might be quite the comfortable position for the Steam Deck to be in: An infinite gaming library on the go... only on Steam Deck (yes, another slogan, what's good, Valve, hola).
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