Steam Deck owners must be feeling rather pleased with themselves right now. First, most pre-ordered a device before the reviews, and it has turned out to be a solid gold buy. Secondly, if you wanted to buy one right now, you would have to run the gauntlet of scalpers. And Valve has done a good job getting hundreds of Steam games verified for the fledgling platform. Now there is some more good news, as Microsoft today announced support for Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate through Microsoft Edge (Beta) for the Steam Deck.
Microsoft Edge community manager MSFTMissy posted on Reddit about Edge now being able to facilitate Xbox Cloud Gaming on the Steam Deck. Missy sounded rather excited as she explained how the Edge team worked closely with Valve and the Xbox Cloud Gaming teams to achieve this game streaming feat. She went on to say how today's news of Xbox Cloud Gaming on Steam Deck will "open new opportunities in the Linux gaming community." The Edge CM also assured readers that "this is just the beginning of the story for gaming on Edge."
We worked closely with our friends at Valve to support #Xcloud #XboxGamePass through Microsoft Edge for the Steam Deck. https://t.co/NIuHCJtXMR pic.twitter.com/Jr4JPQSbFCMarch 18, 2022
Double Beta Alert - Cross Your Fingers and Toes
With two major enabling pieces of software still in beta, you shouldn't be surprised to hear that getting Xbox Cloud Gaming working on your new Steam Deck isn't exactly consumer-friendly. After a bunch of routine settings and app menu fiddling tasks, you must dive into the command line chomping Konsole and input some lengthy commands. Please head on over to the Reddit link in the previous paragraph if this is something you might do in the immediate future. For the less tech-savvy readers, Microsoft has a dedicated support article featuring more detail and some screenshots to guide you through.
There seems little point in replicating the methodology of wrangling Xbox Cloud Streaming onto a Steam Deck here, as the apps, install, and preparation method should be finessed over the coming weeks - and methods could (and should) change. Suffice to say, you need both Microsoft Edge (Beta), Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta), as well as an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription to go through the process.
Before signing off, it is worth reminding readers that you can still play a range of titles from Xbox Game Studios natively on Steam Deck. A list of compatible titles is available here. Some notable non-working omissions, which have anti-cheap issues at the time of writing, include; Gears 5, Halo MCC, Halo Infinite, and Microsoft Flight Simulator X.
Valve and Microsoft are also working on getting Windows 10 and 11 on the Steam Deck. You can test it, but it isn't quite ready for prime time.
