For whatever reason, MS has failed miserably in the phone and tablet market both from a hardware and from an O/S perspective. The Surface is an exception, but like I said it's a laptop, not a tablet.
You "can" do this now already with Shadow (tho the certainty of the service at this point is questionable and they are jacking their prices). The topic has come up in the past and most comments were that Shadow may be detected as a VM and end in account bans. I'm all for cloud computing and cloud gaming and would support a clear statement that a dedicated cloud machine is within allowable ToS.
Microsoft cloud computing (which is something different from cloud gaming) is a really bad idea I think, because all your private data now resides on Microsoft's servers. Microsoft is a data aggregator like Google and Facebook, they want to know who you are and what you do. If you need a powerful "cloud PC", the "rent-a-PC" services like Shadow are much better than cloud services. Unlike Microsoft, these companies don't care which software you use, they don't care what you do, or who you are, they just want to rent hardware. Companies like Shadow have been doing this for years. You simply log into a clean PC, and after you're done, they wipe the PC for you. They couldn't care less what you did on the PC. https://shadow.tech/
Steam Deck is interesting, it should allow you to play EQ on-the-go. There are only two potential issues I think. 1) battery life, Valve says 2-8 hours. 2) the UI of many games will not be adapted to a 7 inch screen. Many games might suffer from simply being unreadable on small screens due to an inflexible UI *COUGH EVERQUEST* Anyway, it is insane that other companies allowed Nintendo to dominate mobile console gaming for so long. It is about time Nintendo got some competition, they became way too consumer unfriendly. After the second Joy-con drift issue, I am done with Switch. Nintendo is a crazy arrogant company, only after consumer groups threatened to take Nintendo to court did they even recognize these Joy-cons issues. And Nintendo still refuses to simply fix the issue in new consoles, they have a deal with the Japanese company making these faulty products and that company also refuses to fix the issues because they make more money from broken products. I forgot the name of the company, but it's the same Japanese company that causes all the double-click issues in gaming mice that made the joy-cons. Many companies actually like their mice breaking down, but not all. Mouse company Roccat was pissed that these Japanese mouse switches kept breaking, and they have now started designing their own. Other companies like Razer still use this junk which is why they keep suffering from double click issues. This company also makes the system where you register your ticket to enter an underground subway in Japan, not surprisingly they are also made to break down after 2 or 3 years, which is why they constantly need to repair this junk, there is always some repair guy on his knees working on one of ticket counters. They also make the shutter mechanism in cameras that breaks after a few years. They became a billion dollar company by selling stuff that is carefully designed to break down, each time a competitor comes onto the scene that does make stuff that keeps working, they buy them out and shut them down. Probably half of products that use some kind of switch of any kind, use this company, they are responsible for millions of broken products.
Remembered, they're called Alps Alpine, Alps Electric Co. Japan. They have 30,000 employees in Japan who make buttons specifically designed to break down, that's their business model. They probably make half of the switches, buttons and touchscreens in the world. If a button no longer works on your car, Nintendo Switch, Playstation, Xbox, mouse, keyboard, smartphone, dishwasher, whatever...it is because of them.
You wouldn't use it to run EQ; BUT it was kickass for D&D. The Surface table can track your miniatures position and orientation, and read physical dice (as long as they contrasted in the IR spectrum) etc. while projecting a tabletop map and enemies/effects from underneath.
It's not insane that other companies allowed Nintendo to dominate the handheld sector. The issue is mobile phone (and tablet) gaming. It costs less money to put development efforts into Android and iPhone gaming and the audience is MUCH larger than a dedicated gaming handheld. There's just way more money to be had in the Google and Apple marketplaces. That's why Sony dropped the PSP and Vita. Nintendo stuck it out, but even they are now putting out their IPs on Android and iOS now because it's just throwing away profits not to. We're lucky Nintendo has decided to stay in the hardware business unlike Sega.
If the entire dedicated handheld gaming device industry went away it wouldn't make a dent in the gaming market. Just my opinion.
Microsoft is nothing like Google or Facebook - not even close. Has the company started a level of data aggregation? Yes. But nothing like those two. Microsoft, at least for now, is actually a practical and decent cloud platform / solution. Ultimately, if you put your data anywhere outside your control, it is at risk - period - that's a decision you make in all cases and nothing unique to MS. As for GPU hardware virtualization that someone mentioned, it is already a reality and the bottleneck is consumer bandwidth more than anything else.
