The Steamboy (no relation to the anime/manga of the same name, obviously) is a handheld Steam OS powered device that will supposedly be able to play many of your favourite Steam titles on the move.
Today though, Smach, the company behind the device, has dropped the ‘Steamboy’ moniker in favour of calling it the ‘Smach Zero’ and have also announced that the unit will retail for a pre-sale only price $299 (€299 in Europe). Where the bitter pill comes in though, is that while units will be available to buy on November 10 (the same day as other Steam Machines get released), the hardware won’t actually be shipped to customers until a nearly whole year later, with the fourth quarter of 2016 pegged as a tentative shipping window. Ouch.
Back on the good side of things though, Smach claims that the device will play “more than 1,000 games” from day one, with a hardware specification that supposedly provides a good bit of grunt for a relatively modest financial outlay. Input-wise, the Smach Zero emulates the “latest version” of Valve’s official Steam controller somewhat, boasting two touch pads, a control stick, six rear buttons and seven front buttons for folks to tangle their digits around.
In terms of under the hood specifications, the Smach Zero boasts the following:
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AMD embedded G-Series SoC “Steppe Eagle” with Jaguar-based CPU and GCN-based Radeon graphics
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4 GB RAM memory
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32GB internal memory and SD Card Slot
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USB OTG
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5-inch Touch screen with 720p resolution
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Configurable tactile gamepads
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HDMI video output connection
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Wi-Fi connectivity
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Bluetooth connectivity
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4G mobile network connectivity (PRO model only)
Exhibited at Gamescom last week where Smach made the pricing and release announcement, nobody attending the show was actually able to get a hands-on, or even an eyes-on of the thing in action. That said, the company claims that popular Steam titles such as DOTA 2 and Civilization V were all perfectly playable on the device. Though in all fairness, the notion of those specs remaining quite as desirable a year from now is one that is far from guaranteed as even currently released games comfortably exceed the boundaries of what the Smach Zero is presently capable of.
