Morality / Deepstate convos aside. I personally I can’t really fault proton on here. They are the only public provider I’ve seen with 0 tracking across any of their apps.

What they provided was payment info.

Any recommendations for an alternative?

There is more than just that when it comes to PC games

System requirements: RAM , CPU clock speed , GPU. And even if your requirements match there is no guarantee the game will work well. MW 2019 has stutters on my machine. No explanation to why ! I can play Indiana Jones at High settings no problem.

Let’s agree to disagree then.

It’s not a like for like experience no matter how you slice it.

I know this is going out to an audience who regularly self hosts and runs Linux.

But not everyone has the same technical skill level and the experiences are not ideal for everyone.

But which side ? Right or left ?

Consoles aren’t going anywhere. I understand this crowd isn’t going to understand why. As half of you this morning for funsies decided to self host an instance of a discord clone on a toaster you found on the side of the road. Using Arch Linux of course !!

But the majority of people that aren’t on here the majority of people you know Microsoft is actually salivating to take money from aren’t. And I can tell from Xbox one to Kinnect those are the people they want !!

Steam deck over its 4 years has sold roughly around 5 million world wide. Switch 2 in less than a year has sold nearly 17 million !

The goal of this “new” Xbox is to get Windows for more normies into their living room. And Microsoft going to recoup share they lost overtime to smartphones and others. And to me I don’t see that working like at all …

Xbox is dead as a platform and this new strategy will be dead on arrival.

I’m not sure if you understand the point of my post. Yes PC is not just Windows. But the whole point of this product will be the “Xbox experience” which is installed on WINDOWS. Sure you can buy this box and then just install Bazzite or whatever. But why wait for this “box” to do it ? Just build a custom PC which is guaranteed to be better value and something you can do right now ?

I’m not attacking PC gaming. I love PC gaming. But this is in the context of an dedicated gaming console. Which for Xbox is going away.

My point is I see little value in the move. My point is I believe it’s the wrong approach. Valves approach with their baked in software is much better.

I wouldn’t worry to much about that. Microsoft can build out additional emulation to support those games. Now how much of they can pull from what’s been done with Xbox One / Series that remains unclear.

They can always “borrow” from the foss community and just use their emulators.

I wouldn’t expect the same upgrades you saw with the old back compat catalogue. But hopefully it’s as functional as it was on its OG hardware.

But whatever they do I know the community will be able to improve upon for the whole PC space to utilize without needing to pay Shitsoft for it …

Your thinking about this to literally with the name “Xbox” which is a part of my concern. Modern traditional consoles use customized hardware , usually offshoots of existing PC parts. They run by custom firmware and software that makes them purpose built devices. Xbox’s to this point had a kernel level Windows implementation with most of what we hate about windows left out.

With this new “Xbox” your getting a Windows PC. There is no “sideloading”. You just close the Xbox interface and install Steam. Your “Xbox” games will just be windows games. And if your OG xbox games play , it will be through emulation.

If this sounds exciting to you, great. But you don’t have to wait for Microsoft to release anything. You can go buy or build your own gaming PC right now and get all the same things !

If this is what people truly wanted steam Decks would of sold over 30 million or so. They’ve sold around 5 million.

There is a place for dedicated game consoles. If there wasn’t the Nintendo Switch wouldn’t have sold 150 million units …

You’re not missing much bud …

Microsoft was already releasing games on PC. All this does is removes any dedicated hardware. Officially forcing windows down Xbox gamers throats. One less option in the space not really one more.

Windows is not the future for gaming. Windows shouldn’t be anyone’s future

Death of the “platform” as in dedicated hardware designed purely to play games.

Going forward “Xbox” games will just be Windows games.

So yes by my definition, it’s dead as dead as Elvis …

That sadly maybe a requirement. Let’s hope not haha

I find it odd to protect children they will stalk the hell out of us but won’t arrest known pedophiles …

I hate the world

There is a huge difference between waiting for an update and installing a game that may not work. It’s a huge difference then fiddling with settings and configs to get it to run smoothly or not crash

They can gate it , and still have you install it. Doesn’t mean they have to modulate it out. If sub === home disable things

You are correct and I’m amped for it !

Microsoft has no interest in scaling back windows especially for the sake of user experience. The want Ai in your face they want ads for you to upgrade to office 365.

So while they could do all of this even with a modified version of Windows 11 , they won’t.

To me there is some value in having a true console experience. Put a disc in you know it works. Download a game and it plays as good as you can.

Even with Steam Deck you can download games that won’t work or won’t work well.

A lot of people don’t have the patience for that. And so long as consoles can stay under the PC equivalent price I think there will be value.