Valve emblems the ‘Steam Body,’ however what the heck is it?

After the smash hit that’s the Steam Deck, all eyes are on Valve for its subsequent {hardware} transfer. One other stab at digital actuality? A console to tackle Sony and Nintendo? (Oh, Microsoft, what’s up, didn’t see you there.) A brand new trademark submitting for the “Steam Body” has avid gamers and press alike turning the hypothesis as much as 11. And yeah, I couldn’t resist doing a few of my very own.

The US Patent and Trademark Workplace has a public submitting for the Steam Body identify, assigned to Valve Company and its company workplace in Bellevue, Washington, and commenced on September 2nd. Based on the documentation, it’s utilized to “the classes of pc sport consoles for leisure sport enjoying; online game consoles; online game equipment, particularly, controllers for video video games.” A separate submitting listed “pc networking {hardware}; pc peripherals; pc {hardware} and pc software program for the copy, processing, and streaming of audio, video, knowledge, textual content, and multimedia content material.” Each of them have been noticed by a Reddit poster.

That’s a number of company legalese, however “pc sport consoles” and “online game equipment” are arduous to overlook. I’m immediately pondering the probabilities of a set-top-box model of the Steam Deck, a second go at Valve’s unique Steam Machine PC-console design, or presumably even a subsequent era Steam Hyperlink streamer gadget. There have been rumors on this space recently — solely unsubstantiated, I hasten so as to add — across the “Valve Fremont” identify and a few {hardware} exhibiting up in benchmarks.

I don’t personally consider that this Freemont gadget is heading in the direction of a shopper product. The extra seemingly rationalization to me is that it’s developer {hardware}, being distributed to high-profile devs and publishers to assist them get their video games prepped for the Steam Deck and comparable handhelds just like the Lenovo Legion Go S. Or at the least that was my place two days in the past, when a viewer requested the query on The Full Nerd podcast.

However a developer field doesn’t want a trademark submitting, which positively signifies some form of completed product, meant for shoppers or in any other case. Past that, we actually know nothing in regards to the “Body” identify. It’s been speculated that it’s linked to Valve’s “Deckard” headset primarily based on a number of traces of code in SteamVR’s interface (as PCGamer notes), however that additionally appears considerably tenuous to me. And I’d like to consider that Valve goes to push its weight round and make one other drive for VR gaming.

I hate to carry the room down, however we merely don’t have sufficient data to make higher guesses at this level. The one factor I can say for certain is that, flush with money and using excessive on singlehandedly booming the hand-held PC gaming section, Valve is definitely primed to make one other huge swing. I can’t wait to see if it hits.

Additional studying: VR gaming isn’t useless but! Valve’s Deckard headset is our final hope