If the Next Xbox Runs on Steam, I’ll Buy It on Day One
In a recently posted YouTube video, Xbox President Sarah Bond made a big move by announcing Xbox’s partnership with AMD for what its next-gen console will ultimately be. But there’s one little detail tucked away at the back of the video that caught my attention. Forget “immersive gameplay and gaming experiences enhanced by the power of AI.” Did she just say the next Xbox will be able to run Steam?
“It’s all about creating a gaming platform for you that’s always with you, so you can play the games you want, across devices, wherever you want,” Bond says just before the video ends. “Giving you an Xbox experience that’s not tied to one store or one device.”
It’s an exciting premise, but it’s not entirely clear what it means. Microsoft has been focusing a lot of its attention lately on expanding the Xbox brand to apps built for streaming devices and third-party portable gaming PCs . So while this sounds like an admission that the next Xbox console will be able to run third-party game stores, it could also just be a reference to PCs having an Xbox app that can run games from other stores.
Personally, though, I’m hoping for the former. Ever since I started playing PC games back in high school, I’ve been looking for a way to ditch consoles for good, but since I occasionally like to play games in the living room, there hasn’t been a good option for me yet. This could be it.
Xbox Could Become the King of Home PCs
Others may be less sure about wanting their living room PC to be an Xbox. But I’d like to argue that current living room PC solutions suck. I’ve tried just putting a PC in my living room. But that means wasting power while I’m in my office. I’ve tried running a long HDMI cable from my PC to my TV. Aside from being a tripping hazard, it meant I had to run back and forth between rooms to troubleshoot technical issues. And I’ve tried streaming games from my PC to a Steam Link, a Raspberry Pi, and later to a connected Steam Deck. Aside from introducing latency into the equation, something always ends up going wrong, and I end up having to repeat those trips back and forth to my office.
Plus, it’s just not intuitive to use a mouse and keyboard on a big screen, at least for menus. I hate keeping a wireless keyboard and touchpad next to the couch — they just take up too much space on my coffee table. But I also hate the idea of not being able to game in my living room, so I live with it. Sometimes I just don’t want to be in my office after work.
An Xbox that can simply use a controller to open Steam like any other app would be a dream. All the convenience of a console, but with the versatility of a PC.
Why should you play Steam games on Xbox?
So why would you want to play PC games in your living room instead of just buying them for your console, especially if you’re going to use a controller anyway? I think there are three reasons, really: flexibility, accessibility, and cost.
Yes, it makes sense to buy Xbox games from the Xbox Store, but doing so ties you to Microsoft’s own devices, at least when it comes to consoles. The Play Anywhere program gives you access to the PC versions of some games when you buy an Xbox version, but it’s not compatible with all games and still locks you into one store. Meanwhile, buying a game from a PC store like Steam lets you easily bring your library with you when you upgrade to new devices, whatever they may be. This provides a kind of “backwards compatibility” that isn’t guaranteed when new consoles launch (though Bond confirmed in yesterday’s video that the next Xbox will be able to run your current Xbox game library). It also lets you play games on a handheld or laptop while you’re away from your main device, then use cloud saves to bring them to the big screen when you get home. If I can buy games to play in my living room, on Steam rather than at a store, I can rest easy knowing that they will be part of my library for years to come, rather than being isolated on some forgotten system in the back of my closet in just a few years. I’ll also know that my library platform won’t lock me into a specific brand in the future. Xbox is better at this than, say, Nintendo , but there’s no guarantee that it will last.
Plus, some games just aren’t available on consoles, or come out late. This isn’t a big deal for big releases like Call of Duty or Madden , but for early access or indie games where developers may still be going through the process of getting their games approved for the console’s own store, they often release on PC first. Being able to play your Steam games on Xbox lets you jump right into that experience (hello Freedom Planet 2 , one of my favorite indie games, came out on PC a year and a half before console).
Finally, there’s cost. While the Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo stores are no strangers to sales, PC game stores thrive on them. That’s because of competition. Until now, consoles have tied you to their own digital game stores, so there’s less incentive to offer discounts. But PC games can be bought in a lot of places. That means quarterly Steam sales, regular midweek and weekend sales, and other PC game stores like Epic, weekly free games that you can keep as long as you pick them up at the right time. Honestly, when it comes to PC gaming, if you play it right, you can focus most of your spending power on the hardware and still have a decent-sized library filled with free or cheap games. If Xbox allows Steam, or better yet, Steam in addition to Epic or other game stores, building a library for it could be a lot cheaper.
How real is an Xbox running Steam?
Again, none of this is confirmed. But there is one note toward the end of Bond’s video that gives me hope. After talking about how the “Xbox experience” isn’t tied to a single store, Bond mentions that the Xbox team is “working closely with the Windows team to ensure that Windows is the number one platform for gaming.” It’s not “Windows and Xbox.” It’s just Windows. Translation: The next Xbox could run on Windows.
I mean, technically, that’s what the current Xbox does, but it’s so limited that it barely feels like the same thing. However, if the next Xbox console is anything like the recently announced ROG Xbox Ally Handheld , then it could turn out that the next home Xbox console will essentially just be a PC with a special Xbox interface layered on top of it and the ability to run proper PC apps – something the current Xbox can’t do.
On one hand, it might be a little sad. It would definitely feel like “Microsoft is giving up” if it actually made the next Xbox a gaming PC rather than a more handcrafted device. On the other hand, I like gaming PCs, and one that has fewer barriers to casual gaming sounds like a dream come true.
There are still plenty of reasons to be skeptical — we don’t yet know if this will happen, or how customizable the next Xbox hardware will be (another big plus for gaming PCs), or how much it will cost. Part of what typically makes consoles more affordable than PCs, for example, is that companies can sell them at a loss and expect to recoup their costs through game sales. If you can buy games for your Xbox from non-Microsoft stores, will that make the console itself more expensive? But it still seems like an experiment worth trying. If Microsoft makes an intuitive, powerful enough living room PC that can run my Steam library (or even my Epic library), it will finally give me the experience I’ve been chasing, unsuccessfully, for decades.