Steam Deck could be an Ultimate Mobile Gaming Experience with Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation games

It is great to see the amount of excitement around Valve’s Steam Deck. As a Linux gamer, and occasional Windows gamer, it is great to see the amount of work that has gone into improving Linux gaming — even a year ago. Many companies, not just Valve and AMD, have been pouring manpower into improving the gaming experience of Linux, thus Steam Deck gaming.

EA Play

With all of this excitement, I think something else people should know is the fact that many of EA’s library on Steam work on Linux. Now, some of them are not flawless, meaning I did find some occasional stuttering. However, the Steam Deck — and Proton — should hopefully be polished up with fixes by the launch at the end of this year.

On Steam you can purchase EA Play for $30/yr. This is a pretty low fee for the bundle of games you get. There aren’t as many games as something like Xbox Game Pass; however, it doesn’t cost as much either.

I think this provides some additional incentive for those that are new to Steam, can’t spend a lot of money to build up their library, but also want to play more than just indie games. For $30/yr you get a decent amount of games that’s rotated around for your Steam Deck.

The games that I’ve played so far include:

• The Sims 4 (flawless)
• Need for Speed Heat (didn’t initially detect Xbox controller, but does now)
• Battlefield 1 (very stuttery)
• Battlefield 4 (playable)
• Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order (some stutter, Xbox controller)
• Titanfall 2 (flawless, Xbox controller)

I plan to try out more, but for the price, that’s a decent list of games that cost more than $30 alone. Granted, you don’t get to keep these games like Stadia, but you won’t be bored with the amount of games. They leave games on there long enough for you to finish, as long as you’re not getting in right before that game is scheduled to be rotated out.

Xbox Games

Xbox has also been moving their game library over to Steam, and many of those are playable on Linux right now using Proton. Some people have been wanting a mobile Xbox gaming experience (not streaming), and they could finally do that with the Steam Deck. This is a step Xbox has made to bring their games to gamers, no matter the platform.

Xbox Cloud Gaming

Apparently, Phil Spencer has had the Steam Deck, and has tried xCloud on it. If you don’t know, this is the ability to stream Xbox console games. According to Phil, xCloud works well on the Steam Deck. This will open up a huge collection of Xbox games to Steam Deck users.

PlayStation Games

Just like Xbox, PlayStation has also brought many of their game library over to Steam. This is great news for those that enjoyed their PS Vita — like myself. Unfortunately, the Vita has not seen an update in years. So, the only option to play PlayStation games on modern hardware — on the go — would be the Steam Deck.

Controller Game Library

With the dense Steam library of games, plus the addition of Xbox and PlayStation games, the Steam Deck will offer gamers the most games on a mobile platform. Steam currently offers over 50k games right now, 12k with full controller support, and 8k with partial controller support (meaning some parts of the game could require the use of the trackpad). By the time the Steam Deck launches these numbers could grow. This is because developers may add this functionality in to sell more copies on the Steam Deck, or they may fix their listing as I’ve played some games that do not list controller support even though they do.

Emulation

Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation aren’t the only games you could play on the Steam Deck. You have to keep in mind that there is a full Linux desktop on this device. People on the Internet have already started expressing excitement about the possibility of running emulators. You would be able to load emulators to also play NES, SENS, Wii, Wii U, Switch, Vita, etc. So, with the Steam Deck, you have access to games on other platforms, including the Switch. The amount of work that has been put into the Switch emulator has been incredible. I have seen the performance of Switch games on Linux, it still needs some work, but I have been able to play games like Animal Crossing for 1+ hours with no issues.

Proton

I’m not going into too much depth, there are great articles out there that explain this perfectly. The technology that makes a lot of this possible is Proton. It’s a fork of WINE (which is NOT an emulator). This technology provides a translation of Windows calls to Linux. So, games that have been written for the Windows operating system would have their calls translated to Linux in real-time. This is opening the Steam Deck to a huge collection of games that weren’t created for the Deck.

All of the things I have listed could definitely lead the Steam Deck to being one of the most exciting mobile game launches. As long as Valve doesn’t screw this up, this could introduce millions of people to PC gaming.