While Alienware is among the few companies developing portable handheld gaming PCs, the latest news is that popular gaming and hardware studio Valve has been busy developing a Nintendo Switch-like portable PC that can run a large number of Steam games.
The information comes from an exclusive report of Arstechnica, stating that the new handheld gaming console is designed to run most of the Steam PC games via Linux. The report suggests that Valve is looking to officially launch the device by the end of 2021. The device is codenamed StealPal.
Steam has also been inserting hardware-related codes onto the latest versions of the Steam storefront application, and mentions of SteamPal were discovered on Steam’s code. Interestingly, SteamPal is a derivative of another term called “Neptune” and “Neptune Optimized Games”, found on previous versions of the Steam code.
While there is no confirmation that SteamPal is indeed the final name of the device, the report does confirm that the device features a touchscreen with built-in controls, which technically sounds like Switch Lite-like device. There are also no certain details on the specifications of the device like the SoC used on the device, the display size and resolution, battery capacity, internal storage, and more. However, the report does suggest that Valve will have both standard gamepad buttons, joysticks, and touchpads along with the touchscreen display.
There is no word yet on the cost of SteamPal and if there will be different versions of the new handheld device.
