Valve has openly announced that there won’t be a successor to the Steam Deck for quite some time. Why would there be, despite the fact that several more powerful handhelds have come out? The Steam Deck still reigns supreme. There is also the problem of battery power with every other PC handheld. Increased TDP always means less game time and who wants to be tethered to the wall like a child in the 90s who hasn’t got any batteries for their Gameboy. Valve didn’t say anything about not making a console though!
Let the rumours begin! Coolbho3k a user on Reddit did some digging and found that Valve is indeed working on something codenamed ‘Fremont’. Coolbho3k found a change in the Steam Deck Kernel by a Valve employee that pointed to some testing happening for the ‘Fremont’ device.
Interestingly enough this device appears to be of the AMD variety, codenamed Lilac. This could be a development board but there are also Geekbench references for the same name. Each of which points to the AMD 8540U.
It’s unclear what this device may be and the speculation is already coming in hot and heavy. Coolbho3k suggested that it might be a console, which makes sense given the battery constraints other PC handhelds are facing. The kernel change is in the ChromeOS Embedded Controller driver, which lends further weight to the theory that this is likely a console. The presence of ChromeOS on a console would also mean Native Android Apps. Perfect for streaming devices and the potential inclusion of Android games.
Whatever the SOC may be in the future the current board is significantly faster than the Steam Deck. This could be a development board though, so don’t get your hopes up just yet, especially as this is largely speculation at this point.
On a closing note, thanks to coolbho3k for sharing the info, if you’re a Redditor head over and show your appreciation. Valve is working on a VR headset and controller, if you’d like to find out more. Click here.
