Valve, in the person of Greg Coomer, one of the leading handheld product designers, has confirmed that the company is working with AMD to support the Steam Deck for the new Windows 11 operating system. SteamOS 3.0 based on Linux is used as the official operating system.
SteamOS 3.0, Windows 10 and Windows 11
Valve itself is convinced that the Steam Deck will be able to meet the expectations and thus the necessary minimum requirements for Windows 11 (system requirements) via the built-in hardware. Even if the developers have mainly dealt with Windows 10 so far. The American website PC Gamer published this information exclusively in a video.
We've been so focused on Windows 10 so far that we haven't got that far. Our expectation is that we can meet that.
Greg Coomer, Valve
In particular, the obligation to TPM 2.0 or fTPM 2.0 via the firmware and the required Secure Boot would have to be taken into account. Valve is already in discussion with AMD in this regard, so that the necessary options are provided via the BIOS.
We are also having discussions with AMD to make sure we can take that into account at the BIOS level. So there are no signs yet that there will be problems with Windows 11.
Greg Coomer, Valve
In terms of hardware, nothing speaks against running Windows 11 on the portable console PC anyway. The handheld with Zen 2 and RDNA 2, which will appear in December of this year at prices starting at 419 euros, is based on a modern custom APU, which in turn is likely to be based on AMD Van Gogh and should have the required security functions.
Problems are not to be expected
Most observers assume that with the open platform and the current hardware next to SteamOS 3.0 will also run Windows 10 and Windows 11 without major adjustments. Valve itself aims to ensure that all games in the Steam library are running when the game console is shipped.
First videos show hands-ons
In the meantime, the first journalists have had the opportunity to do a 90-minute hands-on with a pre-production model of the Steam Deck and were allowed to play games like The Witcher 3 (test), Doom: Eternal, Control , Deadcells and Hades on the handheld, including the website The Verge, which particularly praises the performance and handling of the Steam Deck.
However, in all reviews and videos also said that the portable game console in the current pre-production state still suffers from bugs and Valve has not yet been able to integrate all anti-cheat engines into the Proton compatibility layer. So the entire Steam library is not currently running, as promised.