MacMusic  |  PcMusic  |  440 Software  |  440 Forums  |  440TV  |  Zicos
valve
Search

Valve Is Making a Switch-Like Portable Gaming PC

Wednesday May 26, 2021. 02:02 AM , from Slashdot
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Video game and hardware studio Valve has been secretly building a Switch-like portable PC designed to run a large number of games on the Steam PC platform via Linux -- and it could launch, supply chain willing, by year's end. Multiple sources familiar with the matter have confirmed that the hardware has been in development for some time, and this week, Valve itself pointed to the device by slipping new hardware-related code into the latest version of Steam, the company's popular PC gaming storefront and ecosystem.

On Tuesday, SteamDB operator Pavel Djundik spotted the change in Steam's code, which pointed to a new device named 'SteamPal.' The name is a derivative of a previously discovered code term, 'Neptune,' which began appearing in September of last year and came with a 'Neptune Optimized Games' string. At the time, curious code crawlers thought this discovery referred to some type of controller. Technically, that's true. The 'SteamPal,' whose name we're putting in scare quotes because we do not have confirmation of the device's final name, is an all-in-one PC with gamepad controls and a touchscreen. In other words, it looks and functions like a Nintendo Switch (albeit without removable 'Joy-Con' controller functionality).

The SteamPal will [feature] a system on a chip likely coming from either Intel or AMD, not Nvidia. (The aforementioned Switch-like PC manufacturers have leaned on both AMD and Intel for their products.) It's unclear whether Valve will release multiple SKUs to offer customers a choice of power level, battery life, and other specs, as other Switch-like PCs have offered over the past year. At least one SteamPal prototype version is quite wide compared to the Nintendo Switch. This extra width accommodates a slew of control options. No, Valve is likely not slapping an entire QWERTY keyboard onto its system, but the company has packed in a standard array of gamepad buttons and triggers, along with a pair of joysticks and at least one thumb-sized touchpad (in addition to the device's touch-sensitive screen). The SteamPal's touchpad is likely smaller than the pair of touchpads that came standard on every Steam Controller. The SteamPal's Switch-like properties will include the option to 'dock' to larger monitors via its USB Type-C port, but I don't have firm details on exactly how that connection will work or whether Valve has any plans for an eventual SteamPal dock.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.
rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/R07LZNLUISU/valve-is-making-a-switch-like-portable-gaming-p
News copyright owned by their original publishers | Copyright © 2004 - 2024 Zicos / 440Network
Current Date
Mar, Fri 29 - 08:55 CET