Some clever souls ran SteamOS and its Steam client on Nintendo's famous console.
At the end of last year, Valve presented a new step in its strategy: the simultaneous release of three new devices to further strengthen its grip on PC gaming. Valve already runs the most popular PC gaming platform, Steam, and it is also the company headed by Gabe Newell that produces and distributes today's best-selling handheld console, the Steam Deck. To strengthen its position, Valve has come up with three new devices whose release - postponed several times - should take place before the end of 2026: the Steam Machine, a real little PC for the living room; the Steam Controller, a new, atypical game controller; and the Steam Frame, a virtual reality headset that can be connected to the PC as well as being stand-alone.
Proton 11.0 (ARM64) seen on SteamDB © VideoCardz
It's precisely this very point - its ability to operate autonomously - that is the source of today's news. Indeed, to make it autonomous, Valve has built its virtual reality headset around a Qualcomm SoC, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, which is extremely powerful, thanks in particular to its ARM architecture. ARM architecture? That's quite a change from the x86 used on PCs, whether we're talking about Windows or SteamOS. There's no mystery about it: for its Steam Frame to be able to connect to Steam, and thus exploit gamers' game libraries, Valve needs to make its client ARM-compatible, which is why the firm has designed FLEX, a tool designed to transcribe x86 instructions so that they can be understood by an ARM processor.
aagaming demonstrates SteamOS running on Switch © Bluesky
Despite the title of our news item and all these details, don't see us coming? Well, you should know that the Switch's architecture is also ARM-based, with Nintendo actually relying on an NVIDIA-modified Tegra X1 chip. As a result, a number of smart guys have taken advantage of Valve's developments to try and run SteamOS on a Switch... and it works! Well, not completely, and there's no question of launching a single game, obviously due to a kernel problem that's too out of sync with Valve's work. On the other hand, SteamOS launches perfectly and all hardware seems to be recognized, especially Joy-Cons, as can be seen in the demonstration video by a certain aagaming. In passing, he points out that things should progress for the Switch and that other ARM machines should also be able to run SteamOS.
