Phil Spencer wants a handheld Xbox

Gaming
41

Yeah! This is what I think a portable Xbox hinges on, being able to access my library of games.

Also, a dedicated Xbox operating system should deliver better performance and battery life than running windows.

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42

Native XboxOS wouldn’t need layers of DRMs and AntiCheats eating battery and hogging performance.

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43

Hassle? It takes 10 minutes following a YouTube guide.

If I got an ally I wouldn’t be able to dual boot with steam os

44

Yes it’s a hassle.

And way to ignore the rest of my post. A Steam Deck doesn’t give access to hundreds of third party games people have already bought on Xbox. It will never be the Xbox handheld you think it to be.

45

If the games are play anywhere then yes you will have your library on PC/steam deck with windows

46

Not sure why you’d want to…? You don’t need Steam OS to use Steam.

47

Because Steam OS is vastly better in a handheld form factor. But I vaguely remember reading somewhere that Valve intends to replace big picture mode with the Steam OS UI at some point.

EDIT Valve will replace Big Picture mode with the new Steam Deck UI - The Verge

48

Play Anywhere games are very small portion of people’s libraries.

Just did a check of my pc and console libraries and it is somehow even worse than I thought. Of my hundreds of digital games in my Xbox library, only a few dozen are available for me on PC.

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49

Exactly.

50

We need an oled.

A rog ally oled would make steam deck oled look like the switch 480p graphics

51

Enough with your steamdeck FUD

52

Wow, it suggests to me that you haven’t used either! I own both and can tell you the Steam Deck is a night and day difference over the Switch.

They clearly spent a lot of time optimising the screen around both the game / battery performance and I think they personally hit the sweet spot with the screen.

The screen is just one part of the jigsaw and the rest comes down to anti-aliasing etc which the Deck can do way better than the Switch. I have actually been rather impressed with how the games look on a handheld.

If you start comparing the PPI with the screens in other popular products it’s not really far behind at all. If they went with a 1080p or 1200p screen the performance and battery performance would’ve taken a massive hit and I would rather them have longer battery and better performance, it’s one thing I really noticed when I was comparing the Deck to the Ally, Go & Claw (battery especially).

I gamed on the Deck for a couple hours last night and when I finished I was still on 81%…if it was 1080p I would have likely already been reaching for a charger (defeating it being a handheld!)

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53

why would a 1080p+ screen take a massive hit to battery? is there any data about this stuff out there?

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54

The two main reasons are:

  1. Higher resolution screens have more pixels, therefore more power is required to power/backlight each pixel.

  2. Higher resolution screens need more processing power to render the images at that resolution.

It’s why if you reduce the resolution on something like the ROG Ally from 1080p to 720p you will get more battery life. The only issue is because it’s a native 1080p screen it won’t give you as good of a image as a native 720p screen would. It’s also why if you watch a VHS tape on a modern 4K TV it looks awful but on a old 480p TV it will look better.

EDIT: Just to be clear I’m not saying a 720p screen is better but with the current tech I’d rather sacrifice higher resolution over battery life, especially when the PPI is still so high that it’s hard to notice. When we can comfortably get 6-8 hours gaming at 1080p 30fps in handheld then sure!

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55

I literally can’t focus my eyes close enough to the Steam Deck (LCD) to see any pixels.

Maybe the youngsters out there can. But even then, you still wouldn’t notice at normal playing distance.

I’d say anything beyond 720/800p is basically just marketing.

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56

I game on my mobile at 1080p 120fps and battery isnt that bad. Grsnted theyre very cheap looking games but polished

I wasnt comparing steam deck to switch. Of course deck is better looking than switch. Im saying thr power of a rog ally would be able to utilize and oled screen more.

And im not haying on the deck. I think its vastly overrated.

57

For the first point i could not find data.

For the second point this is not an issue. Its the other way around, higher resolution screens are better for upscaled content because the lower resolution can be interpolated to more pixels.

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58

I couldn’t find any research papers for the first point but it’s based on the technology itself, Bing summarised it quite neatly here:

  1. Pixel Count and Transistors:
  • When comparing screens with different resolutions, the one with higher pixel density (more pixels) will indeed consume more power.
  • Each pixel on an LCD or OLED screen is controlled by a transistor. More pixels mean more transistors that need power.
  • So, a higher-resolution screen has more transistors to activate, leading to increased power consumption.
  1. Backlight and LCD:
  • Most of the energy consumed by a display goes to two primary components: the backlight and the LCD.
  • The backlight, whether it’s a CCFL tube or a white LED, consumes roughly 75% of the screen’s energy.
  • Regardless of the LCD type, the backlight consumes the same amount of power, regardless of the resolution.
  1. Updating Pixels:
  • Here’s where the difference lies: A higher-resolution screen has more rows of pixels to update.
  • Assuming the same full-screen update rate, the screen with more pixels requires more power because it has to refresh a larger number of individual pixels.
  1. CPU and Bus Work:
  • Additionally, the CPU and the CPU-to-display bus have to work a bit harder with more pixels.
  • Handling more pixels means more data to process, which indirectly affects power consumption. In summary, while the backlight remains consistent, the LCD’s pixel count and the processing overhead contribute to the increased power demand of higher-resolution screens. So, when choosing a display, consider the trade-off between resolution and battery life! :tv::electric_plug:

For the second point it’s not the upscaling/downscaling which impacts the battery life but the extra power draw, for example the GPU will need to render an additional million pixels for each frame for 1080p compared to 720p. The additional power draw from the GPU is what reduces the battery life.

The upscaling/downscaling issue is just another issue where I was explaining if you play a 720p game on a 720p native screen it will typically look better than trying to run a 720p game on a 1080p native screen because there’s no scaling/interpolation.

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59

I also can’t see the individual pixels.

I can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p on a 7" screen but it is so negligible when the screen is that small and the PPI is so high.

Ah yes but mobile gaming is different as it’s optimised around mobile hardware and as you say has substantially less demanding games :wink:. These PC handhelds run fully fledged AAA games.

Yes I agree you would get more performance in terms of FPS with the Ally’s Z1 but you wouldn’t get anywhere near the same gaming time either.

I think Windows Central summed it up well here:

Screenshot_20240402_140527_Chrome
Screenshot_20240402_140527_Chrome1080×1383 287 KB

  • I’m pretty sure this is also the older LCD Steam Deck which has worse battery.

The battery life on all these handhelds are pretty poor so as a handheld I’d always opt for the one with better battery until the tech catches up.

60

If you ever really need the maximum playing time without recharging (like on a trip,) find a 2D pixel game to keep you entertained and set the TDP to 3W.

That’s where the Deck has the advantage. I don’t think the Windows handhelds can go that low.

1 Like