With the Steam Machine, Valve’s move to bring PC gaming into the living room. Now, one group of developers and designers is looking to bring it on the road. Announced on the last day of this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, the Steamboy is about the size of a PlayStation Vita – and provides everything one needs to game on the road.
Now, that said, it’s not quite as powerful as its big brother (though what it’s got under the hood is more than enough to play most PC games). The SteamBoy features a quad-core CPU, 4 GB of RAM, 32GB of built-in memory and a five inch 16:9 touchscreen. Of course, given that it’s equipped with game streaming functionality, all of those features become a little irrelevant if you’ve access to a desktop computer or the Internet – in such situations, it can stream gameplay directly to your box. As such, it should be possible to play whatever games you choose.
“SteamBoy won’t be as powerful as other announced Steam Machines in the same way [the] Nintendo 3DS or PS Vita performance is not comparable to Wii U or PlayStation 4,” a representative explained to The Escapist. “However, it will be possible to play the majority of current games in Steam.”
Aside from the technical features, the Steamboy’s equipped with two touchpads, eight action buttons, four triggers and two buttons to the rear. It’ll offer support for both WiFi and 3G networks.
Now, at this point, there’s no guarantee that the project’s actually going to see completion. The group designing it is doing so independently of Valve – meaning they don’t necessarily have the Steam developer’s support. Still, it’s a really cool idea, and I don’t see it as one that Valve’s necessarily going to shut down.
Assuming the Steamboy actually does see its development completed, it’s slated to release sometime in 2015. Check out the trailer here.
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SteamBoy Portable Steam Machine | Gallery
