Don't expect a SteamOS phone after the Steam Machine, Valve engineer says

Though the Steam Frame's compatibility tech is helping creaseless retired Windows-to-Android emulation

Valve’s quiescent bankrolling of open-source emulation tools could marque it heaps easier to play your PC games room connected a humble smartphone, though it sounds similar Gabe-made SteamOS phones are improbable to beryllium joining the company’s increasing hardware catalogue. In an interrogation with The Verge, Valve technologist Pierre-Loup Griffais confirmed that they’ve been backing the improvement of Fex – a escaped compatibility instrumentality that gets Windows apps functioning connected mobile ARM processors – since good earlier revealing the ARM-based Steam Frame standalone VR headset.

Valve's bundling Fex into SteamOS truthful the Frame, owed successful 2026, tin tally Steam games consecutive disconnected the headset’s interior chip. But it is already retired successful the chaotic close present – i.e. GitHub –, and has a promising aboriginal successful bringing those precise aforesaid games to Android phones. Just not, Griffais says, phones with a Steam logo connected them.

"I don’t cognize if that’s going to beryllium a large absorption for america to make section contented oregon effort to make SteamOS for devices similar that" helium explains. "I mean, I’m not discounting immoderate possibility, but I deliberation with conscionable surviving room, handheld, and desktop, trying to person a bully result for gaming applications and everything other you’d privation to bash successful a desktop, we person a ton of enactment to do."

The surviving country and handheld formats intelligibly notation to, respectively, the upcoming Steam Machine and the existing Steam Deck. But these are some based connected x86 processors, overmuch similar a regular Windows PC oregon laptop. It’s ARM hardware, the diesel to x86’s unleaded, that Fex and the Frame are trying to ace – with astatine slightest immoderate success, judging by the slickness with which Hades 2 and Hollow Knight: Silksong ran connected the Frame erstwhile I tried it astatine Valve’s offices past month.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

Steam telephone oregon no, Fex whitethorn fulfil that committedness of Steam games connected mobile. It is, for instance, 1 of aggregate x86 emulation layers employed by Gamehub, an Android crippled launcher app produced by Chinese peripheral makers GameSir. I’ve tried this connected my Pixel 9 and admittedly haven’t had overmuch luck, adjacent with the games I cognize enactment good connected the Steam Frame: Hades 2 crashes instantly and Silksong gets stuck connected an endless launching screen. Also, there’s a non-zero anticipation that I’ve handed implicit my Gmail and Steam relationship details to the Chinese Communist Party. C'est la vie. You don’t person to look far, mind, for folks who’ve utilized Gamehub to get Androidified Steam games up and running, including the writer of that Verge piece.

Hopefully this cross-device compatibility propulsion continues apace; Valve evidently person a concern involvement successful getting Steam games (uhhhh, atrocious Horses) playable connected arsenic galore computery doohickeys arsenic possible, but kicking down compatibility barriers and spreading bundle crossed devices of the user’s choosing is bully for the communal gamesplayer arsenic well.