Steam Deck now supports Xbox Game Pass and Cloud Gaming

The Steam Deck really is an impressive piece of hardware. If you’re looking to run Xbox’s various gaming services on the portable PC, now you can.

Xbox’s cloud gaming head Catherine Gluckstein made the announcement on Twitter. Also included in the tweet is a link to a Reddit thread for specific instructions on how to get Xbox Game Pass and Cloud Gaming running on the Steam Deck — there are some caveats. Namely, it all works through the Microsoft Edge browser beta on the device. If you’re willing to jump through that hoop and work some other magic through Steam Deck’s native Linux OS, then you’ll be able to play anything offered on Xbox’s subscription services.

If not, there are still plenty of Xbox games that play natively on the device through Steam itself. The list of Xbox Games Studios titles includes Fallout 4, Forza Horizon 4 and 5, Sea of Thieves, and more. Note that there are some exceptions, namely Halo Infinite, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Gears 5, and Microsoft Flight Simulator X.

Impressive Steam Deck stories continue to trickle in. Elden Ring players noticed that their game of choice ran better on Valve’s device than regular PCs due to some of the Deck’s architecture. Meanwhile, the emulation scene is going strong. GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin was shown running on the device before it even shipped to regular customers.