Asking the question for my brother in law. He is in the military - navy equivalent - and he is looking for a good console to game offline for long periods of time (3-6 month without internet). The offline capabilities are the most important feature by far.
He is not a PC player, he does not have a steam account. He subscribed to the Xbox game pass and would like to be able to use it offline. He mainly want to play all the open world games out there : Cyberpunk, Starfield, Far cry…
As far as I know, Xbox game pass is not compatible with the steam deck other than windows dual boot. But the steam deck is IMO the best Handheld PC on the market.
I’m afraid that he would be disappointed with the steam deck performance for such games and the inability to use the Xbox game pass. Should he buy the Rog ally instead? I don’t know if the Rog Ally is good offline too.
Any advice?
for offline gaming, having a game downloaded from somewhere else is unfortunately the most reliable way
Both the Ally, Legion Go, and the Steam Deck work great offline. If Gamepass is very important than I cannot recommend the Deck because you’ll have to stream it or put windows on it. At that point it would be a decision between the Ally, which has better features, and the Go, which is larger and has better battery life.
Offline gaming can be hit or miss depending on the game played because some just won’t work while others will be fine. Generally anything purchased from GOG will work perfectly fine offline because they have no DRM
Lots of Steam games can also be played offline on deck and Ally/Go. Some do need to be launched while connected to the internet at least once for them to function offline.
I’d need a bit more information to go off of before recommending either of these devices as they have a bit different use cases.
I think the best option here is the Nintendo Switch, because personally, playing offline on my Steam Deck is really hard.
A bit surprised by your answer. I do have a steam deck and use it offline on a regular basis and I have no particular issue. How clunky is it ?