Month: February 2025

The secret to success for many Silicon Valley tech companies isn’t necessarily that they’re ultra-nimble start-ups, or that they’re led by tech-savvy geniuses. In fact, their success often has more to do with a specific model of corporate culture—and it’s a culture that even companies not based on the US West Coast or focused on technology can adopt.

According to Andrew McAfee, a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management, business leaders need to think more like geeks, but not the computer-based stereotype you may be familiar with. In his forthcoming book, The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset that Drives Extraordinary Results, McAfee says geeks are nothing more or less than “obsessive mavericks” who are absolutely fixated on finding unconventional solutions to their business’ hard problems. You need them throughout the organization, not just at the top, plus you need to entrust them with the power to make real changes.

For this episode of our video series “The New World of Work”, HBR editor in chief Adi Ignatius sat down with McAfee to discuss:

Evolving a company’s culture not by focusing on organizational structure, but on company norms
Building organizations that can get things right, even when the person at the top of the org chart is wrong
The delicate balance of human judgment plus evidence, data-driven insights.
“The New World of Work” explores how top-tier executives see the future plus how their companies are trying to set themselves up for success. Each week, Ignatius talks to a top leader on LinkedIn Live — previous interviews included Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella plus former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi. He also shares an inside look at these conversations —and solicits questions for future discussions — in a newsletter just for HBR subscribers. If you’re a subscriber, you can sign up here.

ADI IGNATIUS:

Andy, welcome

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The New World of Work
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ANDREW MCAFEE:

Adi it’s great to be here.

ADI IGNATIUS:

It’s great to have you. I’ve read the book. It lavishes fulsome praise on geeks in business, not just for their technological innovation, but also for developing an approach to business itself that you’ve come to respect.

ANDREW MCAFEE:

I’m walking away from the computer-based definition of a geek, which was kind of where it started. My definition has two parts. For me a geek is somebody who gets obsessed with a hard problem and is willing to embrace unconventional solutions.

The patron saint of geeks is probably Maria Montessori, who about 100 years ago got obsessed with the problem of how you educate young children best, and came up with the Montessori educational method, which is this radical departure from the industrial scale tipe of schools that was dominant then, and sadly still dominant now. Think about Maria Montessori when you think about a geek.

ADI IGNATIUS:

How do you define the “geek way” that you’re talking about in the book?

ANDREW MCAFEE:

The particular geeks I got excited about that led me to write the book were not educational geeks like Maria Montessori, they were business geeks. They were a group of people concentrated on—but not exclusive to—the West Coast of the US who got obsessed with this problem of, “How do we run a company in an age of really fast technological change and lots of uncertainty? And in particular, how do we avoid some of the classic dysfunctions of the internet era?”

The geek way is what they’ve come up with. It’s the business model, or the culture, or the set of norms that they’ve settled on to try to accomplish that really hard goal.

ADI IGNATIUS:

It’s sort of people who nerd out on, in this case, management, right? Processes of management.

ANDREW MCAFEE:

“Obsessive maverick” is my preferred phrase for a geek. And the obsessive mavericks that I got really interested in were the ones who dove in, again, on this problem of, “How do we run a company and keep doing well in our markets and avoid the dysfunctions that seem to plague so many successful companies as they get older and bigger? How do we avoid those dysfunctions? How do we do something that’s higher performing, more sustainable, and a better place to work?”

ADI IGNATIUS:

As I read the book, some of those attributes you talked about, they had to do with speed, they had to do with experimentation. Is this just another term for being digital, or for applying design thinking of the business? Are we talking the same thing here?

ANDREW MCAFEE:

No, I don’t think so. Adi, you remember Quibi, right, the Jeffrey Katzenberg-led video startup? It was going to do short-form videos and it was going to change the way we consume entertainment.

Quibi was entirely digital. It was a completely digital enterprise. It was a miserable failure. They raised $1.75 billion. They shut down within 200 days of their launch. It was just a catastrophe. It was a completely digital enterprise.

Netflix is a geek company. They follow all four of my great geek norms of science, ownership, speed and openness. And I think their results speak for themselves.

Geek for me is entirely separate from digital. You can be a non-digital geek, and you can certainly be very digital and not geeky at all.

ADI IGNATIUS:

The Quibi thing is an interesting example. I guess what was missing from your framework was the openness. You had a powerful guy who had been successful, who wasn’t listening.

ANDREW MCAFEE:

Not listening to his peers, to his colleagues, to his advisor. He didn’t appear to be a great listener, which is this kind of stereotypical trap that a lot of industrial-era companies fall into. Tech leaders also fall into this trap quite often. You become enamored of your own success and you really stop listening. It’s incredibly common.

One of the things that is powerful, and that I respect about people like Reed Hastings at Netflix is that he was able to build a business that got important decisions right when he himself was wrong about them. In the book I talk about a couple of them.

He was dead-flat wrong about the utility of downloading to the Netflix app. He thought it wouldn’t be very useful at all; it’s incredibly useful.

He was wrong about the importance of kids’ programming for Netflix. And he admits this in the book, No Rules Rules that he wrote with Erin Meyer.

He successfully worked hard on building a company that would correct him, the boss, the high status prestigious person at the top of the organization. It’s part of this great geek norm of openness that I talk about. How do you build a company that will get it right when the person at the top of the org chart is wrong? Man, that’s a hard problem.

ADI IGNATIUS:

It’s a hard problem. And I’m sure some people are going to read your book and think, “Hang on, a lot of these companies we’re talking about are Silicon Valley startups or somewhere in that realm.” The popular perception is these are not cultures that you necessarily want to emulate. They’re often male-dominated bro-cultures. The boss frequently is an overly demanding bully. How do you square all this?

ANDREW MCAFEE:

There clearly is some of that going on in the Valley. There are toxic cultures. You mentioned the bro-culture. I would say that Theranos is one of the most toxic cultures I’ve ever heard about, and it was headquartered in Silicon Valley.

I don’t think those are geek companies at all. They might be in the right geographic location, but they’re not following the geek way, which is about these norms and about creating a culture that is fast-moving, free-flowing, argumentative, autonomous, evidence-driven, and pretty egalitarian. That’s the goal of the geek way.

Now you point out some of these companies that I do think follow the geek way that are still too pale, stale, and male. That’s absolutely true. The evidence is pretty clear on this. I hope that gets better over time.

But Adi, you said something that I disagree with, that a lot of these cultures that are not good places to work. That’s true in some cases. Remember when LinkedIn did its top attractors survey, I believe in 2016, they said, look, we’re just going to look at objective criteria. We’re going to look at which company pages get viewed the most often by LinkedIn members. Which companies get the most interest from LinkedIn members, the most applications, and where do people stick around when they take their first job?

The top 11 attractors in the LinkedIn list were all companies headquartered on the West Coast in the industry that we loosely call tech. The geek culture is an extremely attractive culture to work in.

ADI IGNATIUS:

Some of these founders, entrepreneurs who got into whatever they got into because they wanted to make the world a better place, Serge and Larry in their garage trying to systematize our access to all the world’s information, these great ideals: when they are actually running companies, they not only are trying to run a company, but they become killers, wanting to wipe out the competition, to foster monopolistic practices, to just grab as much market sharing as possible.

ANDREW MCAFEE:

Is any of this new? Within the businesses? No, I’m serious. Were the businesses of previous eras cuddly? Did they want their competitors to succeed? Were they trying to rise all boats?

Capitalism is an inherently competitive process. These companies are very, very good performers. If you want to use the adjective “killer” for them, I think that’s by design. You’re not in business not to succeed. You want to grow your market share. You want to grow your profits, you want grow. That is often at the expense of somebody else.

I think it’s for the courts to decide whether they meet the definition of monopolist. It’s a word we toss around a lot. The courts so far have tossed out a lot of the recent lawsuits against some of these giant tech companies. I don’t think they meet the definition of monopolist. In general, for a lot of these companies, the competition is one click away.

And is Tesla a monopolist in the auto industry? You simply can’t make that case. SpaceX has become pretty close to a monopolist in the rockets and satellites industry, but they didn’t start that way, and they’ve become so large and influential because they do the job better.

ADI IGNATIUS:

Let’s talk about companies that are doing it right. This is not universally for digital companies. Some follow the geek way, as you’ve laid it out, some don’t.

How many companies, large, small, digital, otherwise live into these principles, do you think?

ANDREW MCAFEE:

I think that’s a really interesting question, and I don’t have a great way to answer it yet. Because the only way that I can think to answer it is to administer a survey to everybody and get them to fill it out. That’s just not going to work.

But you can look at what we know about the cultures at these companies. You can also look at the fantastic Culture 500 research that Don and Charlie Sull did, published in a competitor magazine of yours, Sloan Management Review. They grabbed all the LinkedIn reviews and put them through a machine-learning analysis to see what companies’ own employees said about them.

Three areas I was most interested in were execution, agility, and innovation. And wow, the scores for companies clustered on the West Coast, clustered in Silicon Valley, clustered in industries that we call high-tech, those scores are off the charts. There’s not any real competition for them.

There’s something brewing on the West Coast in industries that we label (for reasons that I don’t like very much) high-tech. There’s something brewing that’s new, that is different than what’s going on elsewhere in the economy, and it’s pretty demonstrably powerful. The label that I hang on that is the geek way.

ADI IGNATIUS:

Was Steve Jobs a geek, and did his Apple follow the geek way or was that a different model?

ANDREW MCAFEE:

Jobs has some really classic non-geek characteristics. He believed that he knew best. He had a very, very large ego. He also screamed at his subordinates all the time, which I think is absolutely not what an open leader does.

However, I interviewed Eric Schmidt for the book, and I brought this up to him and he said, “Look, I was on Apple’s board for a while. I knew Steve pretty well.” He said Steve was a tough person in all those ways, but he learned that if you want to stay on top, you have to listen to the people around you. You have to stop thinking that you have all the answers.

We see a really clear example of that with the App Store. Jobs did not want to open up his beautiful, perfect walled garden iPhone to outside developers. He had to be talked into it. He eventually realized that he was wrong about that. There is a little bit of that openness going on.

One thing that Apple is pretty fanatic about, as I understand it, is they make decisions based on evidence. And whether or not that’s a huge AB testing infrastructure is one thing. Apple loves to demo features, and gets everybody in the room to look at this and say, for example, is it better to have blurry portrait photos where you can adjust the blur before you take the picture? The instant they did a demo, they had the answer to that question. They did not sit around and argue from their different points of view. They said, OK, let’s run an experiment. Let’s do a demo here. That’s an extremely geeky approach.

One of the examples in your book of geek culture triumphing is Microsoft, and specifically when Satya Nadella came in and rekindled that early success and more. Talk a bit about what he got right, particularly in the framework that you’ve created.

ANDREW MCAFEE:

Can you think of a more impressive corporate turnaround story in living memory?

ADI IGNATIUS:

No. Microsoft went from the tech company we liked least to maybe the one we like best.

ANDREW MCAFEE:

And if you were an investor, you really didn’t like it for about a decade. The stock price was flat as a corpse’s EKG. And then Nadella took over, and it’s become one of the most valuable companies in the world. It’s an astonishing comeback story.

I got to interview Nadella for the book. He’d made brilliant strategic moves, a bunch of them. You have Microsoft embracing open source, wow.

But I was interested in the cultural changes that he made. And he did a couple things that I think are straight out of the geek playbook. Some of them are obvious. He embraced agile development methods as widely and quickly as possible inside Microsoft. He did a couple things to reduce the sclerotic bureaucracy that was in place at Microsoft, which was just hamstringing their ability to do anything important out there in the world.

One of the brilliant things he did was say, “Look, you cannot own a digital resource inside Microsoft. You cannot own the data. You cannot own the code.”

And what he meant by that was you can’t be the gatekeeper. You can’t say yes or nomor to other groups who might want to use it. With that one simple move, he said to the company, “Look, if the AI grup wants to go grab all of the GitHub code to train up a type to help provide assistance to programmers, you don’t have to ask permission. Just go do that, subject to all the right constraints and safeties on it.” Man, that is an astonishingly good bureaucracy-reduction mechanism.

Maybe the deepest thing that Nadella did was that he pulled off this amazing feat of helping Microsoft become a less defensive organization. What I mean by that was, he said in his interview with me, “We had a culture where it was not OK to be wrong, to show any weakness, to not hit your numbers, to not be the smartest person in the room.” He said, “We just had that culture and it had to change.” He did a number of really brilliant things to move from a culture of defensiveness to a culture of openness.

When I used to hear this word, “vulnerability”, in connection with leadership or business, I thought it was just a buzz phrase, hand wavy, nonsense business. The company is not a therapy group. It’s not there so you can sit around feeling vulnerable all the time. I was just wrong.

Now, the company is not your therapy group. However, a successful company needs to be a place where it’s okay to be wrong, to fail, to not have the answer, to show that you’re uncertain. Nadella helped get Microsoft down that path, and it was an absolutely fundamental thing to do.

I also interviewed Yamini Rangan, who’s the CEO of HubSpot here in Cambridge, who took over a culture and has strengthened it through a really difficult time through the pandemic.

She discussed one of the things she learned and that she was good at was saying in this unbelievably uncertain time of the pandemic where tech companies were shrinking. It was all weird. She said to a lot of her constituencies, “Look, I don’t know. I don’t know what the future holds here. I’m going to be honest with you.” She also shared her board performance liat with her direct reports, not just the good parts, but the stuff that she needs to work on too. These are all just great moves to start to show the rest of the organization it is okay not to be perfect, not to put on the brave front, not to be winning all of the time.

Jack Welch’s autobiography was called Winning, and it epitomized this industrial era view of what you have to do all day every day. I love the geek view, which is, “Hey, man, we’re going to launch some rockets and they are going to blow up. Now, we’re not going to kill anybody, but we’re absolutely going to launch some rockets that are going to blow up on the launchpad.”

Bezos said a few years back in the shareholder’s letter, “We are incubating multi-billion dollar failures inside Amazon right now. That’s appropriate for a company of our scale.” And you look at Alexa and I think maybe he was right about that.

But the point is that this obsession with winning and being on top and being right and being dominant, that has to go away.

ADI IGNATIUS:

I want to get to audience questions. One came from Shabana in Pakistan. What kinds of organizational design, organizational structures, do you need to foster this sort of geek culture?

ANDREW MCAFEE:

I don’t think org structure is the key because the companies that I surveyed have very, very different org charts. They also have very different resmi practices.

Netflix is fairly famous for having the no-vacation-days policy. Amazon has extremely strict vacation policies for different levels of employee.

I think it’s not a matter of the org chart or the org structure that you have. It’s not so much a matter of how resmi a lot of your policies are. It’s a matter of your norms. I love that word and I use it in the book all the time.

A norm is a behavior that the people around you expect. Maybe it’s written down in the employee manual. Very often it’s not. It’s community policing. It’s what the people around you expect. If you go out of line and violate a norm in a community, you will know that fairly quickly and you will either come back into line or you’re just not going to stick around very long.

If you can work on these norms of science, argue about evidence, of ownership, push authority and decision-making down to an uncomfortable degree, speed, iterate, don’t plan, don’t analyze, build stuff, get feedback, learn from reality and then openness. Don’t be defensive. Be willing to pivot. Be willing to admit that you’re wrong. They show a little vulnerability. Those are the norms that are critical for the geek way.

ADI IGNATIUS:

So Bob from our audience is asking, “Is the stack of books on your right your reading list for the week?”

ANDREW MCAFEE:

These are from all over the place. But there was a stack of books that I kept referring to when I was writing The Geek Way, and they were not business books. I am sorry to admit this as a business book writer.

They were books from this relatively new field called cultural evolution, which gets at this fundamental question, “Why are we the only species on the planet that builds spaceships?” Nothing else is even close. We’re really the only ones out there. The octopuses are not going to do it. The ants, the bees, the chimpanzees are not going to do it. Why are we humans the only spaceship-building species on the planet? This field of cultural evolution to me has come up with the best answer to that question, which is we are the only species that cooperates intensely with large numbers of people that we’re not related to. We are the species that learns the quickest, that improves its toolkit, its technologies, its cultures most rapidly over time.

You can take that and put that to work in a company. A company is a large grup of mostly unrelated people. And the goal of a company is to improve its culture, its artifacts, its technologies, its practices over time. The goal of a company is to practice very rapid cultural evolution. Now that we know a bit about how cultural evolution happens, we can put those insights to work.

There’s this massive unexplored opportunity to take the insights from this field and put them to work inside the company. I think it’s so massive because I haven’t heard anybody talk using cultural evolution’s terms inside even very geeky companies. This is very, very new stuff. And I think The Geek Way is the first applied business book of cultural evolution.

Passwords are a crucial element of online security, serving as the first line of defense against unauthorized access to your personal data and sensitive data. To establish a robust password, consider using a combination of numbers, letters, and special characters to create a phrase that is easy for you to remember yet difficult for others to guess. For instance, you might derive a password from a favorite quote, song lyric, or a personal experience, integrating various elements such as capital letters, numbers, and symbols. An example of this could be transforming “To be or not to be” into “2B!orN0t2B!” By utilizing such strategies, you not only enhance the complexity of your passwords but also improve your ability to recall them when needed.

Furthermore, it is paramount to create a different password for each important account. This practice significantly reduces the risk of a security breach. If one account is compromised, having unique passwords for other accounts ensures that the damage is contained, preventing hackers from easily accessing your additional personal information. For instance, if your email account is hacked, having distinct passwords for banking, shopping, and social fasilitas platforms can safeguard those accounts. This layered approach to password protection is an effective means of maintaining your digital safety.

In addition to using unique passwords for each account, it is equally important to change your passwords regularly. Many security experts recommend updating your passwords every three to six months. This routine acts as a precautionary measure, thwarting potential attackers who may have gained access to your previous passwords through data breaches or phishing attempts. When changing your passwords, ensure that the new ones are not mere variations of the old ones but rather entirely new combinations that fit your established criteria for strength.

In the face of ever-evolving cyber threats, it may be beneficial to consider employing a password manager. These tools can help users keep track of complex passwords, generating strong combinations that meet moderen security standards while safely storing them in an encrypted format. By using a password manager, you only need to remember one master password, simplifying the process of maintaining multiple secure accounts.

Lastly, make sure to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) whenever available. This additional layer of security requires a second form of verification, such as a text message or authentication app, to access your accounts, even if someone were to discover your password. By adopting a comprehensive approach to password management that includes creating strong, unique passwords, changing them regularly, utilizing a password manager, and enabling 2FA, you can significantly bolster your online security and protect your personal data from potential threats.

In conclusion, maintaining secure passwords is an essential aspect of navigating the digital landscape. As technology continues to advance, so do the tactics employed by cybercriminals. Consequently, staying informed about best practices for password creation and management is vital. Remember that your password is not just a string of characters; it is a crucial component of your online identity and security. Taking the time to strategically construct, maintain, and update your passwords can make a international of difference in safeguarding your online presence against intrusion. By following these guidelines, you can create a more secure online experience and protect yourself from potential cybersecurity risks.

Cracked Screen, Certified Technician on Site for Phone Repairs

In today’s digital age, our smartphones have become an essential part of our daily lives. They serve not only as communication devices but also as our primary tools for navigation, shopping, banking, plus social networking. This increasing dependence on smartphones has made it all the more frustrating when something goes wrong, especially when facing an issue like a cracked screen. A cracked screen not only hampers the device’s functionality but can also pose a risk of further damage if not addressed promptly. At this juncture, having a certified technician on-site for phone repairs proves invaluable.

Imagine you’re on your way to an important meeting, plus you accidentally drop your phone, resulting in a spider-web-like crack across your screen. Panic ensues as you realize the implications of a broken device on your productivity plus daily routines. You scramble for options, wondering if you should send your phone away for repairs or search for a local shop that can help. That’s where certified technicians come into play—professionals equipped with the skills, knowledge, plus tools necessary to fix your device quickly plus efficiently.

One of the significant advantages of employing a certified technician for phone repairs is the promise of quality. Certified technicians have undergone rigorous training plus certification processes that ensure they are well-versed in various smartphone models plus their unique problems. This expertise allows them to diagnose issues correctly, whether it’s a cracked screen, battery problem, or software malfunction. Moreover, they are familiar with the latest technology plus repair techniques, which means they can efficiently handle even the most advanced smartphones.

Additionally, having a technician on-site saves you a considerable amount of time. Instead of going through the hassle of shipping your phone to a repair center, dealing with potential delays, plus being without your device for days, a certified technician can assess plus fix the issue right before your eyes. Many repair shops offer same-day service for common issues like screen replacements, ensuring you won’t be disconnected from the digital international for too long. The convenience of on-site repairs means you can get back to your routine without significant interruption, whether you’re a busy professional, a student, or someone who relies heavily on mobile technology.

But the benefits don’t stop at speed plus convenience. Many certified technicians also use high-quality replacement parts that adhere to industry standards. This ensures that the integrity plus functionality of your device are maintained, which is particularly crucial for high-end smartphones that feature cutting-edge technology. With subpar repairs, you might find yourself returning to the shop shortly after for the same issue, leading to more frustration plus costs down the line.

Moreover, certified technicians often provide warranties on their services plus parts, offering you peace of mind that you’re making a sound investment in your device’s repair. This warranty reflects their confidence in the quality of their work plus allows you to seek recourse should any issues arise post-repair.

In conclusion, encountering a cracked screen can be a hassle, but having a certified technician on-site for phone repairs alleviates much of the stress associated with it. Whether it’s the peace of mind that comes with professional expertise, the convenience of swift repairs, or the assurance of quality parts plus warranties, utilizing the services of a certified technician can make a international of difference. As our reliance on smartphones continues to grow, ensuring that we have reliable repair options available is not just a luxury—it’s a necessity. So next time you face a cracked screen, don’t panic; reach out to a certified technician plus get your device back up plus running in nomer time.

6
Be Compatible With the Latest Games
The Steam Deck is a fantastic bit of kit, but it’s getting old. The AMD-powered handheld is based on Zen2 architecture, which first debuted in 2019 plus powers the current generation of Xbox plus PlayStation consoles. It’s certainly nomor slouch, but it’s clearly starting to show its age—particularly Valve’s implementation, which has strict power constraints on akun of being portable.

When the Steam Deck was released back in late 2022, the handheld could keep up with many of the latest releases including demanding titles like Elden Ring plus Red Dead Redemption 2 (albeit at lower frame rates than many PC gamers are used to). Fast-forward two-and-a-bit years plus that’s nomor longer the case.

A Screenshot showing CPU plus GPU utilization in Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2.
Games like Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 plus Star Wars Outlaws run like slideshows on the Steam Deck. Though many dedicated RPG fans insist that Baldur’s Gate 3 is Steam Deck compatible, the game struggles to hit 20FPS in the third act thanks to its underwhelming CPU performance. Dragon’s Dogma II is another title that’s considered unplayable on the Steam Deck due being so heavy on the CPU.

An Xbox handheld should be an Xbox first, which means it should obyek Xbox games. Despite its waning popularity, the Xbox is still a dominant platform that sees the very latest releases. An Xbox handheld that can play new games on release day (albeit with a few Xbox Series S-style concessions) would put it head plus shoulders above the Steam Deck in the hardware race.

5
Avoid the Linux Anti-Cheat Problems
While PC gamers might balk at the idea of playing competitive first-person shooters with a controller rather than a keyboard plus mouse, console games aren’t so fussy. Many Steam Deck owners have found themselves left out in the cold entirely when it comes to multiplayer gaming, a result of the platform’s underlying Linux architecture.

Image of an ominous individual sitting at a dimly lit computer screen.
Related
Does Gaming on Linux Have a Cheating Problem?
Apex Legends recently ended support for Linux machines due to cheaters, so what’s going on?

2
Microsoft has two options with an Xbox handheld: create a portable-optimized version of the existing Xbox operating system or ship it with Windows plus deal with the interface separately. Both solutions would solve one of the Steam Deck’s biggest gripes: not being able to play games like Call of Duty due to anti-cheat requirements.

It’s not just Activision’s flagship that doesn’t work. Games like Valorant, Apex Legends, Rainbow Six Siege, plus Epic’s behemoth Fortnite are all incompatible with the Steam Deck. The only way to play this way is to stream the game from your PC, Xbox, or PlayStation.

Fortnite’s Grand Station, an open plaza with trees, buildings, plus a railway. Epic Games
This should be an easy win for Microsoft. If the handheld runs a modified Xbox OS, the Xbox version of those games should work. If it runs Windows, then the same is true but for the Windows port. Of course, the latter raises some concerning issues surrounding the nature of kernel-level anti-cheat on a portable.

4
Deliver a User-Friendly Interface
If there’s one thing the Steam Deck nails, for the most part, it’s usability. You could spend your whole life in Game Mode, browsing your library, buying games, plus fiddling with settings without ever touching the Linux desktop. This wasn’t always the case, plus the Steam Deck was initially criticized for its “work in progress” software. Thankfully, things have improved massively.

SteamOS is still one of the most compelling reasons to choose the Steam Deck over a competing, more powerful handheld like the ROG Ally X. It’s easy to use if you’re new to the platform while being advanced enough to allow you to do things like set a custom TDP or limit the refresh rate of the display in just a few button presses.

Greenlight streaming the Xbox dashboard.
Windows on a handheld, by comparison, is a mess. Middleware from the likes of ASUS attempts to smooth things over, but it’s a far cry from a native solution that ties everything up neatly into one unified interface. Microsoft undoubtedly knows this, since how they tackle this gangguan is a make-or-break issue for the rumored Xbox handheld.

The easy option would be a handheld-friendly version of the already usable Xbox dashboard. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it (plus you can keep your existing themes as a bonus, Valve doesn’t have anything like that). Alternatively, adapting Windows 11 to finally function properly using analog sticks, face buttons, plus a small touch screen could work too.

Perhaps the best option would be a fusion of the two, essentially copying Valve’s homework. This would have the added benefit of allowing you to install Steam within Windows.

3
Play Every Game Pass Ultimate Game
It’s a given that a handheld Xbox would be a Game Pass machine, plus that seems like a win right out of the gate. But there are undoubtedly some challenges to overcome in pursuit of this goal. How Microsoft would optimize the games to work on a less powerful system remains to be seen, particularly since getting Series S levels of performance from a handheld feels like a tall ask.

Legion Go S glacier white showing off Xbox Game Pass.Lenovo
With this nut cracked, however, Microsoft could offer something that nomor other handheld has: an instantly unlockable library of games in a portable factor. Sure, you can install Game Pass games via Windows on your ROG Ally X, but the PC Game Pass catalog isn’t quite the same as the main Game Pass Ultimate offering.

This alone would be tempting for any Xbox owner or Game Pass subscriber, right off the bat. Microsoft already has the Smart Delivery stuff nailed, where saves sync between consoles invisibly so you can always pick up where you left off. Such a feature seems essential on a handheld, but only if the games are compatible.

2
Hit The Right Price Point
Let’s pretend Microsoft manages to nail, or come close to nailing, everything above. There’s one final hurdle to clear if the company is to stick the landing: the price point.

The Steam Deck is a tempting bit of kit because it’s not that expensive, with the base 512GB OLED model starting at $549. Valve has been open about how “painful” it was to hit the original Steam Deck’s launch price. As the hardware has aged, those margins have likely improved. Since Valve also runs the world’s largest online game marketplace, the company isn’t exactly hunting for bills down the back of the sofa.

Half-Life 2 on a Steam Deck OLED on a MacBook Pro.Tim Brookes / How-To Geek
Microsoft would need to come as close to this price point as possible in order to muscle in on the market. Microsoft’s Xbox strategy has shifted considerably in recent years, with the company vying to grow its Game Pass subscriber base through campaigns like “This is an Xbox” while turning to rival platforms like PlayStation plus Switch for additional revenue from once-exclusive games.

If this is indeed the strategy, an aggressive price point is surely part of the plan under the guise of making up the losses through ongoing revenue plus a cut of game sales. There’s also an opportunity to offer higher-end, pricier models with more storage or limited edition designs.

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Offer an “Open” Console Experience
Finally, one thing that likely isn’t of great concern to the average Xbox gamer but that I plus many other Steam Deck owners would love to see is some amount of platform openness. Surprisingly, this is something that Xbox consoles already lean into with Developer Mode, but it’s quite a hassle to have to restart your console every time you want to run RetroArch.

The main use case here is what I (and many others) use the Steam Deck for a good 50% of the time: emulation. Installing a range of emulators on your Steam Deck is easy using tools like EmuDeck, plus you can go even further plus install must-have apps like Decky to tweak how the Steam Deck works. Even being able to use an app like LocalSend to get files to plus from your Steam Deck is a godsend.