Evidence Points To Possible New Steam Hardware In Development At Valve

The current identity for Steam right now still remains a PC storefront on behalf of the platform. However, the firm more & more has continued to explore hardware. Although the Steam Machine was not in its favor, the Steam Deck says otherwise. Even with an OLED Edition available, the firm is iterating on this pursuit. However, it is clarified that Valve is years away from a ‘2.0’ for the Steam Deck as of this year.

Despite that, the firm has also been bolstering its software as well. According to a previous job listing, it is gathered that a potential new Half-Life game is in active development currently. All things considered, new games assumed to be for new hardware would be a possibility. But it would need to be a new identity. In 2019, Valve did do away with previous Steam Machine peripherals at the time after the swift fallout of the console.

From a string of posts on X, known Valve/Steam insider Brad Lynch has uncovered what appears to be reference to a new Valve console. Codenamed ‘Steam Fremont’, SteamOS code reveals that a potential new hardware model is being prototyped internally at Valve.

More in-depth, it reveals that the new hardware does run on AMD silicon according to the code, but Lynch does inject that it is likely only a placeholder until the proper board for Fremont is completed at Valve. “AMD Lilac is likely the raw developer board provided for the platform that Valve planned to use until the first Fremont board finished.”

Another element worth noting of Fremont is the operating system inside. It is revealed that ChromeOS EC is running on the system. But, it does not reflect a full version to be operating on the system and rather to assist in managing tasks on the hardware. “ChromeOS EC doesn’t have much to do with the device running a full version of ChromeOS, btw It’s an open-source microcontroller that can be flexibly used to manage a variety of low-level tasks”

Through the lens for practicality pointing to a console, there is evidence of HDMI Type-A ports which are commonly present on major systems in retail already. “All references to Fremont ensure checks for a full-size HDMI Type-A port you’d see on TV-focused consoles and other desktop computers that don’t have a dedicated GPU with its own HDMI ports”

Are you interested to see what this new Steam hardware could be?