I have an xbox with gamepass. All the games I would buy are on gamepass so I don’t want to re buy games that are already available to me through gamepass.
I know I can stream but it’s not always the best experience.
I can install windows and use the Xbox app, but the controls don’t work natively. I can use a third party tool like steam deck tools but I risk a ban in multiplayer games if I use any of the overlay or fan tools.
I love the steam deck but the lack of Xbox gamepass integration makes me want to sell it for a windows handheld.
Any ideas of how I can better integrate Gamepass on my Steam Deck?
The short answer is: you don’t unfortunately.
You already listed what the options are. The Xbox app and UWP games are not an option on SteamOS, and Windows support is suboptimal. As for Xbox cloud, it’s alright as long as you have a good internet access, which kind of defeats the purpose of a handheld.
Mandatory disclaimer about Gamepass:
Gamepass as a model is not sustainable. It is a loss leader, and there is no way it will go like this without enshittifying.
Not only does it lock you into windows via proprietary APIs, making sure wine can never make it work, it also locks you into its subscription, by, well being a subscription.
If you do not have the money to support the creators directly, just choose the lesser evil, pay less than a third (5$) for mullvad, support one of the best VPNs, and just pirate them.
That way it works on Linux, dosent lock you into anything, and instead of supporting a Megacorp, you are supporting a good company. Still not better than supporting the devs, but better than Microsoft.
For the other 12$ you are saving up, just buy the game you liked most every 3-6 months.
That’s how I do it with RE, Rimworld, and everythibg else I play.
But about your question: if you wanna suck Microsoft dick, you can’t just have the best of both worlds.
Either you stream, or you install Win on your Steamdeck, which will tank the Performance and battery life.
This should work, but I’ll be honest, Setup is a doozey
I’ve just spent the last three days setting it up to use Office365 on my laptop for school
Interesting on paper, but good luck running games with that setup.
If I understand correctly this basically starts a container which itself spawns a VM running windows. Good for running Minesweeper and probably not much else.
I tried setting this up and did eventually get some windows apps working but they constantly had display issues, lost mouse focus or the mouse didn’t align inside the app, window resizing issues, etc. Its good for things that are going to be very static and not much else.
Unless I just set it up wrong, which could definitely be the case.
I was merrily listening to Apple Music via WinApps the other day, when the Windows guest threw up a notification that it hadn’t found any malware. Literally no way to dismiss it without quitting out of any WinApps I had open.
Good old Windows.
Agreed, I’m not sure the Deck has the performance necessary to make it work well.
I got it running on my chrultrabook but its NOT fast (installing o365 took 6 hours for example). You’d be pretty period limited to only games prior to around 2014 based on memory limitations.
Personally? I’m a nutter, so I’d have at it just for shits and giggles to see if it’d work then immediately proceed to abuse my newfound power.
I have WinApps running on the little Dell PC I have at work. It’s only an i3 with 8Gb RAM, but it’s ok with Apple Music and MS Office apps. I wouldn’t want to seriously run any games through it, mind.
