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Ever since the Steam Machine came out a little over a month ago, Valve has been busy releasing SteamOS updates almost weekly. In the latest update, the company added preliminary gamepad support for one of the most powerful <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/best-handheld-gaming-pc” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>handheld gaming PCs on the market.
While Valve still hasn’t added full support for third-party handhelds, the update notes point to “improved support” for MSI Claw handhelds, along with “initial gamepad support” for the Claw 8 EX AI+, the Ayaneo Pocket S2 and the Konkr Fit. Support for the Claw 8 EX AI+ is awesome, but not necessarily surprising. After all, it’s an x86 handheld just like the Steam Deck (and all the other handhelds that currently support Valve’s gaming OS). The two other handhelds listed here are particularly interesting, though.
Valve has been working on bringing SteamOS support to ARM for a while now – after all, the Steam Frame will be running the OS on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. But the Konkr Fit and the Ayaneo Pocket S2 – if they end up getting full SteamOS support – would be the first Android handhelds to do so.
As for MSI, most of its handhelds are powered by Intel processors and graphics, rather than AMD chips. I’ve known that Valve was working on support for other chipsets since I talked to the company back when the Steam Machine came out, but this initial support is a sign that it’s actually happening. It doesn’t hurt that right now, the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is the most powerful handheld from a mainstream manufacturer. The only thing that really held it back when I reviewed it was Windows, and getting SteamOS running on it would go a long way to making it one of the best handhelds on the market right now. It’s only a matter of time, then, before SteamOS gets wider support.
Valve has certainly said that’s something it’s working on. Back when the Steam Machine came out, the console’s FAQ re-asserted that people should install SteamOS on their own hardware if they can’t get their hands on the Steam Machine. And, while Valve acknowledged that, at the time, the OS only worked on AMD hardware, it was “working on expanding support for the future.” Well, a little more than a month later, and it looks like that work is starting to pay off.
Regardless of whether or not you’re interested in buying a Steam Machine – and the mini gaming PC/console hybrid has certainly been controversial – it really does seem like Valve is mostly focused on just expanding SteamOS. And, yeah, Intel and ARM platforms getting support is going to help a lot with that, but the elephant in the room is Nvidia.
It’s no secret that Nvidia’s graphics cards are in the vast majority of gaming PCs out there right now, and the lack of SteamOS support is a serious barrier for Valve’s apparent mission. According to the latest Steam Hardware Survey, 72% of gaming PCs are using Nvidia graphics. So, until Nvidia support rolls out to SteamOS, there’s only so much room for SteamOS to grow. There are certainly ways to get Linux running on an Nvidia-powered rig, but they’re a little more involved than just installing SteamOS on an AMD rig, and usually requires using a different distro, like Bazzite (which is awesome, by the way).
Valve did suggest in an Interview with The Verge that Nvidia support would be coming some time in the future, and I hope that’s true. But until we get some patch notes from Valve saying that Team Green’s GPUs are supported, we’re just going to have to wait. Once that support does come though, I’m not sure there will be much reason to stick with Windows 11 at all.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
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