When the original Steam Machine was announced in 2015, it promised a massive change from traditional gaming experiences. The console-slash-PC gained a lot of attention, but a variety of factors stopped it from being a success. Poor performance sent many players back to standard PC gaming, while the high price point meant Valve sold less than 500,000 units. Despite its failure, though, the Steam Machine had a lot of fans — many of which have waited years for a follow-up. And now it might actually be on the way.
A Reddit user named u/coolbho3k spotted a reference to the Fremont project in the Steam Deck kernel. The code doesn’t make it clear exactly what sort of device Fremont will be, but it references a platform called AMD Lilac. Users have also found references to the same platform on Geekbench, where it scores significantly higher than the Steam Deck. Were it another handheld, this platform would leave the Steam Deck in its wake — and that makes it all the more likely to be a TV box or set-top box of sorts, according to Tom’s Hardware.
Now, the Lilac reference has been around for a while; it was first spotted over two years ago. That’s a solid indicator that Valve isn’t the only company using this chip.
There is also reference to HDMI-CEC, something that wouldn’t be found in a handheld. However, the specific type of CEC is most often related to Google devices, specifically Chromebooks due to its driver. That led u/coolbho3k to speculate that Google could potentially be involved in the development somehow.
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If Fremont is, in fact, a new Steam Machine, then it may also have streaming capabilities like those of the Nvidia Shield. If Google and Steam work together and bring ChromeOS to the platform, users could access ChromeOS in addition to SteamOS, and perhaps even the Google Play store.
All of this is speculation for now. Until Valve makes an official statement about the device, we can only make educated guesses about the hardware. Valve announced the first Steam Deck at CES in 2014, and the information we’re getting now follows a roughly similar timeline. With CES 2025 just around the corner, it presents the perfect time for Valve to come out and announce a successor — and with a recent leak suggesting Valve is also working on a follow-up to the Steam Controller, there’s a lot of evidence that something new is on the way.