Valve Confirms: SteamOS 3 for other devices coming soon!

I remember long ago when I first started this YouTube channel, we're talking 2014, my guys. I was inspired by the Steam Machine project that Valve had been pushing and working on for almost a year at that point. I remember taking a lunch break at my job and I saw Valve announce that they were working on Steam OS, which is how they imagined PC gaming of the future. And I remember saying, "Yeah, Valve, you're absolutely right. You're ahead of the curve and I need to get on this and talk about Linux gaming." And I started this channel. I was, you know, at that point I had been a Linux user for, I don't know, probably a decade since 2004 or 2005 I started using Linux. And I said, "If it's good enough for Valve, if it's good enough for these PC manufacturers making Steam machines, then it's good enough for me to talk about on the internet." And this channel found its niche. And as the Steam Machine Initiative faded into a relic of the past, kind of a punchline, kind of a joke, I still knew that there was potential. And I saw Valve maintaining Steam OS with new updates against, you know, the upstream Debian. And I was like, "They're still doing something." And I knew that there was still something to it. So when Valve announced the Steam Deck, yeah, of course, it made perfect sense. And they said, like, over two years ago, maybe three years ago, that they were going to have Steam OS 3.0 and it was going to be available for other handhelds, not just the Steam Deck. Well, we got the Steam Deck and it arrived with a lot of fanfare and it's been three-ish years and we still don't have Steam OS 3 yet. However, that is about to change. Last week I reported here on the channel that Valve added support for the ROG Allies Extra Keys in the latest Steam OS beta. This is very exciting because this is literally the first time Steam OS 3 has included support for hardware other than the Steam Deck. This is huge because Valve has been talking about having Steam OS 3 available for other systems, other handhelds, other gaming PCs. And I've seen a lot of people in the comments saying as soon as Steam OS 3 hits, they are moving over to Linux full-time. And I can't disagree with you. This is amazing. This is very exciting. It shows that Valve is committed to Linux gaming as the future of the PC and, you know, can't fault them there. I fully agree with that. You know, and there was a lot of speculation. The community was abuzz. Liam and myself and Fan the Deck and a bunch of other folks were talking about how this could be a big deal, an indicator that there is a drop imminent for a public release of Steam OS, which we haven't had for Steam OS 3 yet. And then Sean Hollister, shout out to Sean Hollister at The Verge, reached out to Valve and posted an article about it. So let's talk about this. So Sean Hollister reached out to Lawrence Yang of Valve fame, one of the designers of the Steam Deck, one of the faces of the Steam Deck. And Yang said, quote, the note about ROG ally keys is related to third party device support for Steam OS. The team is continuing to work on adding support for additional handhelds on Steam OS. Now what does that mean exactly for us? Now I think that what this does is it actually suggests a their approach, let's say their approach to supporting hardware. I think what Valve is going to try and do to start with their support for Steam OS is they're going to target handhelds. And I think that that makes a lot of sense because I've long held the belief that just releasing an operating system, especially one that's targeted at gamers like gaming PCs, I mean, think about the Sysafian task of supporting all of that, like infinite combination of hardware that could be out there on the market that people are going to use to game on. So I think that this hints at what I believe to be a winning strategy for Valve instead of like just releasing Steam OS as a, you know, one monolithic operating system that is supported on all hardware. Instead what they can do is say this is like the public Steam OS ISO. It works for the ally, the ally X, the Legion go, the X, Y and Z. Right. So just name a few properly test them and then maybe like discourage people from installing it on other hardware until things get a little more stable, but not doing anything like software trickery to prevent people to install it on whatever, because Valve honestly are data driven and having, you know, crash reports from desktop hardware would be helpful to them, I think. But starting out with something like the five most popular handhelds other than the Steam Deck, that I think is a great strategy, especially when the vast majority of them are using hardware that's very similar to what the Steam Deck already has anyway. And the thing is, this is kind of the strategy of like Bazite and Chimera OS, right, where they have support for pretty much all desktop hardware, but they specifically target handheld devices to make sure that things work just perfectly out of the box for those systems. And I think that this is a winning strategy for Valve if they want to slowly increment the install base of Steam OS on gaming PCs. Again, start with these handhelds that are kind of just single packages that you can then really test and ensure that Steam OS works. Maybe even partner with like GPD or Asus, for example, just partner with them, get pre-release hardware, make a build specifically for that version of the hardware, and then have Steam OS pre-installed on, you know, a portion of these devices. I think that that's a win-win. And if Valve really wanted to make a splash, they could split sales revenue in some way with these hardware vendors. I think that would be an excellent way for Valve to move forward and really make inroads with gaming PCs. Now, would Valve voluntarily give up, you know, a cut of their revenue share? I don't know about that, but we can dream, right? And get this idea out there, right? Talk to Valve. You know, I know that there are people at Valve that watch this show. And if you have that kind of like pull at the company, I think that that's a good strategy for you guys. But I'd like to know what you guys think. Let me know what do you think Valve's strategy is going to be with Steam OS 3? I would love to hear your thoughts on this. If you believe in the work that I'm doing here, if you enjoy these videos, you can use the links below to become a patron. You can also pick up my game, "Doodlings Arcade Sportsball." It's available on Steam, and it's now on Google Play. It's a fun game to pick up and put down. It's a cross between Pong and Foosball, and I think that it's actually quite fun. And a bunch of my friends have enjoyed playing it together as well. And right now it's got very positive reviews on Steam. So with that being said, thank you all for watching. I hope you have a great day, and I'll see you in the next one.

-- Chapters --
00:00 Introduction
01:16 A little history
01:43 SteamOS support for ROG Ally
02:55 The Verge's Article by Sean Hollister
03:33 What I think this suggests
05:16 This is already what Bazzite and Chimera are doing
06:11 If Valve really wanted to move the needle