Steamboxes will be some mean gaming machines when they’ll hit the shelves, but you know what could be even better? Most of your Steam library in your pocket. Steamboy promises to bring all that and more.
Steamboy was unveiled at E3, on the last day of the trade show, and despite expectations, it wasn’t developed by Valve. Instead, this handheld gaming console was brought to life by the Steamboy Machine group. Some think that this is one of the first manufacturers of the highly-anticipated Steam Machines. Supposing that this is indeed a project that’s endorsed by Valve, the fact that the game developer opened SteamOS to manufacturers might encourage the latter to create all sorts of Steam machines, Steamboy being among the first ones.
Despite not being developed by Valve, Steamboy borrowed a lot from the Steam Controller’s design. According to the teaser images and the promo video, this portable gaming console features haptic feedback-based touchpads that resemble quite a lot the ones that the Steam Controller is equipped with.
The specs of this device are by no means spectacular, but they’re decent enough for playing most modern games. More precisely, Steamboy packs a quad-core CPU that is paired to 4GB of RAM. The built-in memory card only has 32GB, so there might not be enough room for many games. The resolution of the 5-inch 16:9 touchscreen hasn’t been disclosed, yet, but since this is as large as the one of Nvidia’s Shield, gamers shouldn’t have any problems.
The similarities between the Steamboy and Nvidia Shield don’t stop at the display, though. Much like the graphics card manufacturer’s handheld console, the Steamboy will be able to stream games over Wi-Fi. On top of that, it might be able to support PC games natively, even though that hasn’t been confirmed, yet.
If and when this device will be launched, the Steamboy Machine team will open the doors for a lawsuit, as the Reliable Corporation’s floor cleaning products bear the same name.
And here is the promo video for the Steamboy. I wish they had used a less Inception-esque soundtrack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM63RuEhgHU
Let me know in the comments section below what do you think about the Steamboy. Are you excited about the prospect of its launch? Would you buy such a device?
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