Thanks for your input. I’m probably just gonna give it a try, digging a bit deeper I found a couple reviews saying durability is pretty bad and others saying it’s pretty great.

Any experience on long-term durability? I’ve read quite a few negative comments online about their durability.

TIL Plasma can generate QR codes for clipboard items. Very handy.

Turn a blind eye to US companies like ChatGPT and ban DeepSeek, okay…? At least you can download the entire DeepSeek model.

Their (not my!) reasoning is that the “Core Technology Fee” covers their costs for developing APIs and software like Xcode that developers rely on to build apps for the iPhone (and other Apple platforms).

Basically “without our stuff, you wouldn’t have a platform”. Except they completely ignore that without their stuff, the iPhone would not be able to exist, so it’s obviously bs.

Valve isn’t publicly traded, and while that doesn’t make them 100 % trustworthy, I’d certainly give them the benefit of the doubt over Microsoft. They make a shit ton of money, but they aren’t obligated to squeeze every last penny out of their customers.

Sure, it would be nice to have 1-click installers for other launchers within Steam and then automatically list games of other launchers in the Steam library, but I don’t even think Valve is the primary blocker here.

Steam had the ability to add external shortcuts as long as I can remember, tools like Steam ROM Manager make use of that already.

Tim Sweeney for example always likes to cry to the press how bad monopolies are with Steam and their 30 % cut and whatnot, he doesn’t seem to grasp that part of the reason almost nobody uses Epic Games Launcher is that it quite frankly sucks. Where is your multi-platform launcher? Ah, need Heroic to do the heavy lifting for you. They could offer an official Flatpak on the Steam Deck, easily installed from the Discover store, that uses Proton for games compatibility, is usable with a controller and adds itself to Steam (and when installing games, adds them to Steam as well).

I’m not that bothered by Valve having that kind of “grip on the market” because in my opinion they are also by far the best so I’d rather they own the biggest piece of the cake than anyone else.

If you’re paying they’re also tracking you.

That was bound to happen at some point. Buying a Google device to then “degoogle” it never sit quite right with me.

Google Maps doesn’t pretend to be good at chess. ChatGPT does.

You’re good, no worries. We’re all just speculating anyway, there isn’t really a right or wrong.

I’d just be surprised if it’d come down in price one model to the next considering prices for tech in general. Maybe Microsoft made a special deal with ASUS, but I think the base model with the Z2 A is what they’ll use to rectify the price of the Z2 Extreme model.

The ROG Ally X’s MSRP is 899,-€ and that’s what it currently costs here in Germany at least. It was as low as 799,-€ though recently, but now it’s back up. Considering this “Xbox Ally X” is the successor to it, I don’t think it’s unrealistic.

Well, at least the base model Xbox Ally has essentially the same SoC as the Steam Deck. The Z2 A has 4 Zen 2 cores and 8 RDNA 2 CUs. It will be configurable up to 20 watts TDP instead of 15 on the Deck, but that’s it. So much for “long in the tooth technology wise”.

Sure, the Z2 Extreme variant will be more powerful, but it’ll also be in a different price category (800-900,-€).

And in terms of user-friendliness: the Xbox Ally will run Windows. It won’t launch into the regular desktop shell (by default), and it won’t have as many services running in the background which might help with performance and battery life, and you’ll probably be able to update drivers and Windows through it. Maybe it will have some preconfigured scripts/shortcuts to install Steam, Battle.net etc. But that’s it. Expect to fall back to the desktop mode (or open a browser, terminal and Explorer window in the new gaming mode) for anything more advanced like installing emulators.

In terms of pick up and play this won’t be much different to the Steam Deck, with the one exception being Game Pass - but even then don’t expect any of the more demanding titles to run well.