- Valve could be making a streaming box
- Hints found in the Steam Deck code
- No indications of a launch date yet
It might be five years since the Nvidia Shield last had a refresh – see our Nvidia Shield (2019) review for details – but the device remains one of the best streaming boxes in the business. We're now hearing it may get a new competitor, courtesy of Valve.
As per a Reddit thread analyzing changes to the Steam Deck code (via XDA Developers), it looks as though the software used on the portable console could soon be adapted to run on a streaming box connected to a television.
You'd then have a lightweight, versatile device that could both play games and stream video and audio to the big screen – much like the Nvidia Shield does. This is mostly speculation at this point, but we could definitely see it happening.
There are references in the code to an AMD 8540U processor, though this may only be referring to a prototype device, so the configuration could change. That would certainly offer more power than the current Steam Deck specs.
HDMI and Android
According to the tipster who spotted the code change, extra support for HDMI control is being added – and the changes match some of the code seen on ChromeOS devices, suggesting support for both Android and web apps.
Apart from that, there are no real details about what could be coming. We don't know anything in terms of dimensions or pricing, and there's no indication here about how long it's going to be before the product is announced (if it ever is).
Go all the way back to our Nvidia Shield (2015) review, and you'll see that it's always been an impressively versatile device. It's earned itself a relatively small but loyal group of users, though we haven't seen any signs that we'll ever get a new model.
What we did get a couple of months ago was the first software update for the Nvidia Shield in a year – though it was intended to squash some outstanding bugs on the streaming box, rather than add any new features.
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