Game Pass On Steam Deck Is The Perfect Example Of The Console's Obtuse Magic

thegamer.com:

The Steam Deck is a great console wrapped within a puzzle inside an enigma. It has great capabilities, but doesn’t explain them well, and locks many of its best features behind unintelligible barriers. Some people like this - the same kind of people who thrive in the BIOS and tweak every possible setting for fun. I’m not saying they’re bad people, they’re just not my people. I built my own PC and tweaked the settings to set it all up, but now I leave it mostly alone unless something breaks.

The Steam Deck seems built for the hardcore tweakers, but it’s still exciting for PC normies like myself to attempt to get apps like Xbox Game Pass to run on the powerful handheld system. Playing anything from that enormous library on the bus? Yes please.

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But it’s not that simple. It never is with the Steam Deck. We’ve had to put together a whole guide for getting Game Pass to work - a guide that involves editing lines of code - when it should be as simple as downloading an app. The process is supposedly going to get easier, but right now it’s a proper pain in the arse.

The end result is amazing - not only is your Game Pass library (courtesy of Microsoft) available on a Linux system - but Cloud Gaming is also available, meaning you don’t have to fill up the Deck’s small memory with your games. The more stuff available on the console the better - I already have the Epic Games Store and multiple retro emulators to top up my backlog Steam library, but some Game Pass games wouldn’t hurt either. Most of the Yakuza series is on Game Pass! And therefore now on my Steam Deck.

But if Valve wants the Steam Deck to be as successful as the Nintendo Switch, or as widely praised