Portable handheld gaming is a fantastic thing, which could be why we really shouldn’t be surprised that someone is trying to build a handheld Steam Machine. The device resembles a Sony PlayStation Vita with a few extra buttons and the Steam Controller’s haptic feedback touchpads. It also has a 5-inch display, and the team behind it claims that it should be able to run most Steam games.
Details about the internals are decidedly light. The Steamboy Machine team has revealed that it will be fitted with 4GB of RAM and a quad-core processor – although what processor this is has not been mentioned. AMD’s A4 APU is the most likely suspect for running this sort of machine as it would be the most space efficient chip. One thing the team did not mention is the battery life of the portable console; which might be worryingly short considering what it is trying to do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM63RuEhgHU
It might just be that this is the kind of machine that makes buying all those pixel based indie games worth it. Risk of Rain or BroForce on a handheld would actually make this console worth having. Provided it achieves its goal of a release some time in 2015.
[Source: Escapist, Steam Boy Machine]
