The Steam Deck didn’t invent the handheld gaming form factor, or even debut it for PC hardware, but it’s certainly the iPhone equivalent for this particular moment. And the vast, vast majority of the Steam Deck-inspired market has been underpinned by AMD’s integrated chips. But that may change soon, as Intel has a big push thanks to its Arc G3 platform. And it looks like Valve is paying attention.
SteamOS builds were already available for other AMD-based hardware, including the Asus Ally and Lenovo Legion (which even has its own SteamOS model you can buy at retail). The MSI Claw is the only Intel-based handheld from a major PC manufacturer, and some variants got a beta build of SteamOS earlier this month. The initial builds are a little shaky with controller issues and more fine grain hardware controls, as noted by VideoCardz.com and ETAPrime on YouTube.
On the MSI Claw 8 AI+ (based on a Lunar Lake laptop chip), the benchmarks are running behind the performance of the same games on Windows 11 for the same hardware. That’s the opposite of what’s generally happened when you compare SteamOS to Windows on the same AMD-based devices, where the focused, Linux-based operating system sees a slight boost for most games. That said, the performance is more than acceptable for the Claw, especially considering the beta state of the SteamOS build.
Both Microsoft and Intel are trying to make inroads in the handheld market, to compete with Valve and AMD, respectively. The Intel Arc G3 processor (a variant of the latest Core Ultra series 3/Panther Lake) is Intel’s answer to the Ryzen Z series, showing some very promising debuts at Computex with handhelds from MSI, Acer, and OneXPlayer. All three were running Windows 11, naturally, which is benefiting from a newly focused interface with Xbox branding.
This is a developing market, and it’s fascinating, at least to PC nerds like me. Valve publishes free builds of SteamOS — arguably the Steam Deck’s most competitive feature, now that its starting price is doubled — for competing hardware. If Valve can get a SteamOS build ready for the debut of Arc G3 handhelds later this year, it’ll give a lot of gamers a good reason to ditch Microsoft. Steam is already the de facto marketplace for PC games, for better or worse. It’s possible that it could become the unofficial operating system of PC gaming. That’s certainly part of the reason Valve is bringing back the Steam Machine, though it’s a tough row to hoe in the current RAM crisis.
SteamOS isn’t a slam-dunk for all gamers; notably the Linux-based operating system still has problems with games that require deep, kernel-level anti-cheat. But I haven’t spoken to anyone who prefers to run the heavy, cumbersome Windows on a handheld device solely dedicated to gaming. If Valve can get solid, stable builds of SteamOS for Arc G3 handhelds ready within a month or so of their release, it’ll be a huge win. And I doubt Acer, MSI, or even Intel would be particularly bothered.
I’m also curious to see how Valve responds to the Nvidia RTX Spark. This Arm-based processor setup is making a big push into laptops, with gaming performance as a key note of appeal. Valve hasn’t had much to do with Arm before…but it’s about to do a whole lot, thanks to the Qualcomm-based Steam Frame VR headset. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could load SteamOS onto an Nvidia-powered laptop? Yes, it would, as I’ve been saying for a while.
