Accidentally published image: Will the Xbox support Steam in the future?
An apparently accidentally published Microsoft image refers to the possibility of playing Steam games on the Xbox. It has since been removed.
(Image: Shutterstock.com/Anthony McLaughlin)
Are Steam games coming to the Xbox platform? An apparently accidental advertising photo published by Microsoft is fueling the discussion. It shows an Xbox library with a tab called "Steam" next to the "Game Pass" tab. Microsoft has since deleted the image and replaced it with a less objectionable one.
However, several media outlets, including the gaming magazine Xbox Era, discovered the collage in time and published copies. The image appeared in a blog entry entitled "Opening a Billion Doors with Xbox" on the occasion of the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. In it, Microsoft describes its efforts to develop the Xbox from hardware thinking to platform thinking. "Our goal is simple: we want to turn every screen in the world into an Xbox," writes Xbox manager Leo Olebe.
Xbox as a platform, not a console
This in itself is not breaking news: Microsoft has lost the "console war" against Sony and has been steering its Xbox brand on a new path for several years now. At the heart of this effort is the Xbox Game Pass gaming subscription, which can already be used to play games on pretty much every conceivable device class – via cloud gaming, even on mobile devices and TVs without a console. Microsoft also calls its gaming app on the PC "Xbox".
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There have also recently been increasing indications that Asus is working on a handheld under the Xbox brand –, even if the device will run Windows 11 according to the current state of knowledge. The device could therefore not only launch games on the Xbox platform, but also Steam titles or games from the Epic Games Store via their respective apps.
The functionality now shown in the screenshot would apparently go beyond this by bringing Steam titles directly into the Xbox interface. It is unclear exactly what this would look like. It is conceivable, for example, that the Xbox app on the PC could simply be linked to Steam, as is already possible with GOG Galaxy, for example. According to technology magazine The Verge, Microsoft is currently working on such an integration.
However, future Xbox consoles could theoretically also be able to play Steam titles. So far, Microsoft has not commented on the apparent image misstep.
(dahe)
