If the rumor mill is to be believed, Valve has supposedly been working on a portable gaming console and might have something to announce in the near future. Now, rumors like these should always be taken with a grain of salt. More often than not they are nothing but hearsay or the figment of someone’s imagination. Other times, though, they speak of projects that often don’t see the light of day. Companies as big as Valve tend to work on a myriad of different projects, most of which are then either scrapped or transmuted into something else — and we never really know what’s happening behind the curtains. 

Still, some kind of portable gaming console seems to be in the cards, with multiple different sources claiming that Valve has something big in the works. Codenamed SteamPal, it’ll supposedly run on Linux and will employ an AMD Van Gogh APU — we’re talking about Zen 2 architecture with four/six cores and eight/twelve threads, probably made in the 7nm manufacturing process. 

It’ll also utilize absurdly fast LPDDR5 RAM, and have somewhere between 4 and 16 execution units, depending on the SKU Valve opts for. As for TDP, it’ll probably run at either 15W or something like 28W (or in that ballpark) depending on the cooling solution. Either way, it’s definitely a potent low-power APU that’s great for 720p gaming, if not even 900p depending on the title. 

As for its outward appearance, SteamPal will supposedly have a 7/8″ touch-sensitive display (probably IPS), with a “thumb-sized touchpad” along with two joysticks and a USB-C port for both charging and external display support. Finally, the price: $399. This, of course, means very little given how there’s no confirmation whatsoever that this device even exists, but it’s definitely a palatable MSRP given the form factor. 

Based on all available information, it seems like it’ll be similar in size to the Nintendo Switch of the AYA NEO. We know for a fact that portable gaming is on the rise and it seems that everyone wants in on the action. Moreover, the hardware itself has advanced to such a point that a low-powered APU really can churn out enough frames for an enjoyable gaming experience. It’s not the kind of set-up you want to play Red Dead Redemption 2 on, but esports titles and older triple-A ones are definitely on the table. 

There’s still no release date for this mysterious device, but if the rumor mill is to be believed, it’ll hit the market sometime in Q4 2021. Well, we’re assuming Valve actually goes through with the whole thing — they’ve been known to cancel their projects (or alter them completely) on a moment’s notice, so definitely take everything written above with a bit of reserve. 

In any case, we can’t help but wonder what a portable gaming console from Valve would look like and, perhaps more importantly, how it would perform. Fortunately, it seems like we won’t have to wait long to find out!