Leaked image of a new Legion GO handheld with a small Steam logo
The road to a new Lenovo Legion GO device has resembled more of a rollercoaster ride than a straight path. But in case you want to skip the line and jump straight to the adrenalin rush: Lenovo just invited press to a special CES 2025 event focused on handheld gaming, and Valve — makers of all things Steam, including Steam Deck and SteamOS — is featured as one of the event’s special guests.
On its own, this may not seem particularly interesting. Until you factor in the “Powered By SteamOS” branding guidelines Valve recently published. To quickly catch you up on that, the document states the following: “The Powered by SteamOS logo indicates that a hardware device will run the SteamOS and boot into SteamOS upon powering on the device. Partners / manufacturers will ship hardware with a Steam image in the form provided by and / or developed in close collaboration with Valve.”
Then there’s the alleged image of a new Lenovo Legion GO handheld boasting a Steam logo next to one of its menu buttons. That was shared a few days ago by prominent — and historically reliable — leaker Evan Blass on X (formerly Twitter).
There is also a collection of other strong signals, such as Valve officially confirming that SteamOS will support the Asus ROG Ally. And that Valve is inching ever closer at releasing SteamOS 3 to the public. Which was always the plan, even if it’s taking a painfully long ValveTime™.
Plus, let’s be real, there is a growing dissatisfaction about Windows on small screens like these. A problem that Valve solved three years ago with SteamOS and Steam Deck.
And now, the industry simply needs to follow the leader.
Lenovo Legion GO 2: Powered By SteamOS?
Let’s circle back to this event, which was just reported on by Sean Hollister at The Verge. An email invitation to a January 7th event proclaims, “The future of gaming handhelds is coming to CES ‘25 […].” It features some notable guests, including Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais, a Valve designer instrumental in the creation of both the Steam Deck and SteamOS. Except that at this event, he’s being touted as “Chief Design Architect.”
Also showing up to the event is Microsoft’s “VP of Next Generation” Jason Ronald. AMD will be there too, quite possibly to reveal more details about the Ryzen Z2 Extreme processor and to help unveil one or several new handheld gaming devices from Lenovo. I’m hedging my bets that one of those will be powered by SteamOS.
A scenario involving an ecosystem of Legion GO devices is a major win/win for all parties involved. Lenovo gives consumers a choice by offering both Windows and SteamOS, Valve wins by gaining even more momentum in the handheld space and drawing even more people to Steam — especially if the store is front and center — and AMD wins by continuing its console + handheld dominance.
In an ideal world, I like to imagine consumers having a Steam Deck-like device that’s easy to dual-boot between SteamOS and Windows to suit their needs. That ideal world inches ever closer.