The Asus ROG Ally dropped in 2023 earlier than a revamped ROG Ally X adopted this yr, and whereas many have sung the praises of the transportable gaming PC, one grievance appears to stay fixed: Home windows 11 sucks on handhelds. The excellent news is that it appears the choice to change to SteamOS on the ROG Ally is now formally inbound.
Our evaluations of the ROG Ally and ROG Ally X each embody the identical grievance – Home windows 11 doesn’t really feel fairly proper on a handheld machine. Whereas it’s acquainted, Microsoft’s OS doesn’t have the identical easy really feel as SteamOS on the Steam Deck.
So, with nice curiosity, some of us picked up on part of Valve’s newest SteamOS launch notes, through which the corporate states that it has “added assist for additional ROG Ally keys.” That quantities to a fairly sneaky approach to point out that the ROG Ally is lastly getting SteamOS assist!
In reality, Sean Hollister of The Verge wasn’t positive if this meant what it appeared to counsel, so he sought affirmation from Valve that SteamOS is certainly coming to the ROG Ally. He obtained a optimistic response from Valve designer Lawrence Yang, who said: “The observe about ROG Ally keys is expounded to third-party machine assist for SteamOS. The crew is constant to work on including assist for extra handhelds on SteamOS.”
SteamOS is on the best way! Quickly…
That’s to not say we’ll be waking as much as the opportunity of putting in an entire new working system in just a few weeks – it’s going to be an extended course of earlier than we see SteamOS on the ROG Ally (or different Home windows portables). Based on Yang, although, Valve is “making secure progress” in realizing this purpose.
Yang additionally feedback on Valve’s earlier promise that it is possible for you to to change between SteamOS and Home windows on the Steam Deck. Generally known as dual-booting, on that subject, Yang observes: “As for Home windows, we’re getting ready to make the remaining Home windows drivers for Steam Deck OLED out there (you might need seen that we’re prepping firmware for the Bluetooth driver). There’s no replace on the timing for twin boot assist – it’s nonetheless a precedence, however we haven’t been capable of get to it simply but.”
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It’s fascinating to see Valve sweep in and assist out a competitor in a troublesome spot with the software program aspect of its product, however it does make sense from a enterprise perspective, at the least.
Extra publicity for SteamOS – which is tied to Valve’s personal gaming platform – has received to be factor ultimately. And whereas it isn’t {hardware} gross sales, Valve is form of turning rival handhelds into Steam Decks, in a method – at the least for the software program aspect of the equation.
