In a conversation with The Verge, Valve user interface designer Lawrence Yang confirmed that the Asus ROG Ally portable console, a competitor to the Steam Deck console, will receive support for the SteamOS operating system.
Image source: ASUS
A few days ago, some users noticed that the note for the latest update to Valve’s SteamOS operating system mentioned the ROG Ally console. In particular, support for “additional buttons on the [Asus handheld game console] ROG Ally” was added to the new software. It was then speculated that Valve had introduced support for these keys in the Steam PC client on Windows, which offered a Steam Deck-style Big Picture Mode interface. However, in a conversation with The Verge, a Valve representative said that we are indeed talking about full support for the ROG Ally console.
«This note about ROG Ally buttons is due to SteamOS support for third party gaming devices. Our team continues to work on implementing SteamOS support for other portable devices,” Lawrence Young responded to reporters.
Yang’s statement does not mean that Valve has given Asus its blessing to install SteamOS on the ROG Ally console. Asus told The Verge journalists that there are many reasons why ROG Ally runs on Windows. The main one is that Microsoft has special verification teams that ensure that its operating system will run on many different hardware and processor configurations. Valve is also not yet ready to offer SteamOS to competing portable consoles in the near future. According to Young, the development team is “making progress” in this direction, but “is not yet ready for a full launch.”
Valve also continues to work on the general release of SteamOS 3.0, which theoretically can be installed on any PC, not just portable consoles. Young noted that there is also progress on this issue, but the new OS is not yet ready for release. He also said that the company is preparing to make the remaining Windows drivers available for the Steam Deck OLED. However, a Valve representative did not talk about the timing of the implementation of dual OS boot.
Valve isn’t the only one working to adapt Linux systems and the Steam UI for portable Windows devices. According to The Verge, the developer company Universal Blue previously reported that its Bazzite operating system received support for the Asus ROG Ally X even before its release.