- Valve has pushed out SteamOS 3.8 as a stable release
- It contains “initial support for upcoming Steam Machine hardware”
- This groundwork being laid suggests the Steam Machine is close now, and that’s backed up by a bunch of other rumors of late
It seems the Steam Machine really could be on the brink of arriving, as the ground is now officially prepared for the device in SteamOS.
Valve announced the debut of SteamOS 3.8, which has the following line in the release notes: “Initial support for upcoming Steam Machine hardware.”
In other words, the foundational support for the Steam Machine is now in the full, stable release of SteamOS, which is obviously one of the final steps toward the device hitting shelves.
And this move comes on top of a bunch of other clues that Valve is about to launch the compact gaming PC. For starters, we know the release is set for the summer, as Valve has told us itself, which means a June launch is possible (it’s either that, or July or August).
Furthermore, the Steam Machine has been spotted in various guises online recently, notably a Vulkan conformance test, and there have been Geekbench leaks too (as highlighted by VideoCardz), along with suggestions that reviewers have the PC already.
Elsewhere in SteamOS 3.8, Valve has provided a raft of fixes, including numerous general stability tweaks alongside game performance and stability improvements via an updated GPU driver.
There’s also a very welcome upgrade to KDE Plasma version 6.4.3 with Wayland support, which should improve the performance in Desktop Mode considerably on the Steam Deck (as well as bolster support for external displays, including VRR).
Away from the Steam Deck, we have a couple of key changes, with Valve introducing “improved compatibility with recent Intel and AMD platforms”, meaning SteamOS will be slicker on rival handhelds,…
