During E3 2014, a new portable device was announced that passed under our radar. According to Kotaku and TheEscapist, SteamBoy is an ‘independent project by a group unaffiliated with Valve, aimed at bringing a little PC gaming to players’ pockets.’
SteamBoy is packed with a quad-core CPU, 4GB of RAM, a 32GB built-in memory card and 5” 16:9 touchscreen. While its specs are not up to what most would expect from a brand new portable device, SteamBoy will be able to play most PC games (well, except those requiring more than 4GB RAM… or those unoptimized games that run awful even on six-core CPUs).
Personally I’m not all that excited about SteamBoy as we’ve not since a big push for SteamMachines as of yet. Hell, we don’t even know whether SteamMachines will be a successful or a failed product, so this new portable device based on Valve’s Steam feels kind of… weird (for lack of a better word).
Enjoy and kudos to our reader ‘John Vanitsidis’ for informing us!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
Seems like Valve is getting prepared for some kind of grand finale with all this Steam OS , Steam Machines , Steam Boy , in House Streaming ,Game Sharing and stuff .
it will probably take a long time for them to achieve what they want with this but they know that already unless they take the easy route and go for “Exclusives”. it seems Gabe said they won’t but i am not sure.
Was this announced right now or has this been a thing during the E3? Because not a single place even mentioned it.
A few places did. I think they talked to a smaller site first, The Escapist and Destructoid only just picked it up.
Not sure if they were actually *at* E3 which might also be why it got lost in the mix or overshadowed.
I bet it has great battery life xD
SteamOS has support from Nvidia, Intel, AMD, and dozens of other companies, several AAA games have already been announced for it, and the most used Engines already announced support! Now it’s a matter of time!
Soon the hardware the PS4 and XBone will be very outdated, and the steam machines will always be evolving!
If it’s running Windows and is x86/x64 then it should. That is just run through Steam.
not bad, really interesting 😀
If it’s not that expensive I don’t really care if it isn’t that powerful. I have tons of great indie games I’d love to play on the go, and most of them don’t require much hardware. If it can run games like Valdis Story and Rayman, and maybe some basic 3D titles, I’d be cool with that. Though tbh I’d prefer a regular controller design even though it would limit you to 360 controller compatible games.
The Nvidia Shield has been getting tempting too lately at $200. Just wish it was running Windows so it could natively run low-end games.
I’m fairly certain that, with Shield’s streaming app, you can play any Windows game from your PC, including emulators, etc. And this feature now works away from the house so as long as your main PC is on, you’ll always be able to play those games on your Shield from anywhere with a wifi signal. Also, the upgraded Shield 2 with Tegra K1 should be releasing fairly soon. A diagram of it just popped up in an FCC filing. As a PC gamer that would use the hell out of the streaming function, I might take the plunge depending on how good it looks.
Playing Valdis Story on the go? I need one of these.
Vaporware?
Probably, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see Razer or Nvidia do a real one.
Shield 2 with K1…
shield is a arm cpu, not x86.
impossible
don’t need a X86 to run linux.
but need x86 to run games x86.
Yeah. Considering Valve is not going to allow any other companies manufacture their own Steam controllers, I wouldn’t trust any old company trying to recreate their haptic touchpads. Also, using a 4-button layout as a d-pad makes sense when they’re closer together. These are so far apart they almost look impossible to use. ALSO, the Steam controllers just got delayed until 2015 so I wouldn’t be surprised if their updated version looks completely different than what they’ve shown so far.
It’s an interesting idea, would like to know more about the specs though.