[Onavo]

I think at this point Steam might as well just release the hounds and let third parties build and sell steam compatible hardware (the Android play). Their own attempts have been, well, not great. Dealing with hardware supply chains is a very different game than software. They already have a platform, the hardware is purely for distribution. Whether they make a profit on hardware or not doesn't really matter. They are basically the opposite of Apple.

[awkwardpotato]

Steam already supports 3rd-party controllers and VR headsets. SteamOS is available on several 3rd-party handhelds. What more do you need for "steam compatible hardware"?

[account42]

Do they support any third-party controllers that are anything like the Steam controller(s)? To my knowledge, third party support is only for traditional game-console-like controllers.

[bityard]

According to Wikipedia, they already officially support the Lenovo Legion Go S.

Not sure what you mean by "not great," the Steam Deck is awesome. The one in our household is like 3 years old and still sees daily use. They have been very well received by the PC gaming community.

SteamOS is mostly just the regular Steam client on top of Linux. You will get more or less the same overall experience by starting with a reasonably capable GPU, then installing any mainstream Linux distro, then installing the Steam client, and making a few tweaks. Valve has been very active in upstreaming fixes and features to upstream projects like the Linux kernel and Wine, so the Steam Deck (and soon Steam Machine) doesn't actually have any special sauce, it's just a nice self-contained unit for those who just want to play games and not be bothered by the OS under the hood.

[stetrain]

As far as I know there's nothing preventing third parties from building and selling hardware with SteamOS or a similar software stack.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteamOS

They aren't going to let you advertise them as Steam-branded hardware without an agreement, but there are multiple handhelds that have done so to be branded officially Steam Compatible.

[jdoe1337halo]

They tried this many years ago with the original steam machines, it went horribly. Also, you can install SteamOS or Bazite on most machines. Not sure what the issue is here.

[Forgeties79]

SteamOS does not currently really work on modern desktops/laptops. You can force it but it’s really not made for it. They’re pretty clear about that, I think they even pulled down the OS download page from their site and now clearly mark it as for restoring old machines.

Likely to change soon though with the steam machine release

[a96]

Bazzite is great, though. And doesn't lock you in to Steam or DRM if you don't use them.

[Forgeties79]

Yeah I’ve been using it as a daily driver, no windows partition or anything, for over a year. It’s been great. Having an AMD CPU/GPU combination definitely helps though

[kgwxd]

What is "Steam compatible hardware"? Isn't that like saying "App Store compatible hardware"?