Valve officially released the Steam Deck, and it started shipping out pre-ordered units in late February. The Steam Deck is able to run hundreds of different titles from the Steam store, and it appears that users will soon be able to run Cloud services too. Microsoft recently announced that its Xbox Cloud Gaming platform would soon be available on the Steam Deck, using the full-fledged Microsoft Edge browser.
Microsoft announced the news on Reddit in a new post (via XDA), confirming that users will be able to use the Xbox Cloud Gaming service on the Steam Deck. In the post, Microsoft confirms that it worked together with Valve to bring support for Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate through Microsoft Edge Beta for the Steam Deck.
https://twitter.com/CJGluckstein/status/1504874456300154884
The process requires quite a bit of setup, and it mainly consists of installing the Linux version of Microsoft Edge browser and then adding a shortcut to Edge in the Steam interface. The entire process can be found on this link, explaining how to do everything step-by-step. It’s not yet clear if the two companies will work out a simpler setup solution, and whether other cloud gaming services will ever be officially supported on the platform, such as Google Stadia, or Amazon Luna.
“We’re particularly excited about this ourselves as we feel it can open new opportunities in the Linux gaming community. Additionally, you can still play a range of titles from Xbox Game Studios natively on Steam Deck today. Please check here for a list of verified games. Our new support article goes over how to install both Edge Beta and get Xbox Cloud Gaming set up but know that this is just the beginning of the story for gaming on Edge. :3
If you’re familiar with the Steam Deck and already know your way around the Linux desktop and terminal windows or are the type of person who would rather get a quick recap of how to do something than read an entire support article, we get it. For those of you who want a little more detail and some screenshots to walk you through this, we have a dedicated support article for you! Here’s a run-down on how to set up Xbox Cloud Gaming with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate by setting up Microsoft Edge for Linux Beta from scratch.”