Last year this SteamOS powered handheld arrived on Kickstarter with a $900k goal and no working prototype. Unsurprisingly things didn’t go as planned and the campaign was pulled before the end. The team vowed that they would return after sourcing the majority of funds from private investors instead. Things went relatively quiet for a while, until a Thunderclap campaign was launched with the intention of raising awareness of this handheld before its re-submission to Kickstarter.
The Thunderclap campaign ends on October 11th, after which time the product will go live once more on Kickstarter with a much lower goal. The machine will still come in 2 variants, a standard model with 4GB RAM and 64GB internal memory, whilst the Pro model will double those figures, and add 4G connectivity and a front facing camera. Both machines will contain a 1080p screen and be powered by a battery claiming 5 hours play time.
Interestingly, the team have stated that a low stretch goal for the new Kickstarter campaign will be to provide Windows 10 support for the machine, presumably dual booting alongside SteamOS. The team were at Gamescom last August where they had a working prototype to show off. Unfortunately they’re still polling to decide what screen size they should use, which means they’re a long way off a release date yet. The latest from the team is that it’ll be available in 2017, but that could mean anything between 4 months and 16 months time – so don’t start holding your breath just yet.
