Remember the Steam Machine? EmuDeck founder revisits Valve's TV console idea

Valve once dreamed of creating a Linux-based game console called the Steam Machine. They failed — but the dream eventually became reality in the form of the handheld Steam Deck. Now, one particularly notable Steam Deck enthusiast is reviving the idea of a console-sized Steam box with his own retro gaming twist.

Rodrigo Sedano is the founder of EmuDeck, a program loved by the Steam Deck community. It automatically installs, configures, and enhances emulators for Nintendo, Sega, Sony, and other retro consoles so they work beautifully on Valve's handheld.

Now, he wants to make it even easier. He's preparing to sell you a console-sized custom gaming PC with the full Steam + EmuDeck experience preloaded, as well as a wireless controller, ready for use.

He's calling them EmuDeck machines, and he's currently crowdfunding the idea on Indiegogo at a starting price of around $400 — with an incredibly ambitious promise to ship them in December of this year, just four months from now.

They'll put (weaker) Intel N97 or (stronger) AMD 8600G chips in a Sega Dreamcast-inspired shell, with four USB ports on the front for additional wired controllers or peripherals. By overclocking the AMD 8600G's integrated Radeon 760M graphics, he claims he can get Steam Deck-beating performance from his more expensive $700 model:

However, there are several reasons to wait before putting money down on a crowdfunding campaign. While I like EmuDeck, and it seems he has other software design, web design, and management experience, he admits to The Verge that he's never shipped a hardware product like this before.

He says his U.S. and E.U. partners have told him it will only take about a month to get FCC and CE certification. His current prototype is a mini-ITX board in a wooden box, while he awaits delivery of the Dreamcast-sized console case he's dreamed up for his potential case manufacturing partners in Spain. He plans to assemble the PCs himself, as a kind of family business.

But I think it's at least possible because he says he doesn't expect to sell more than 100 of these as a side project — and because he says these PCs will use off-the-shelf parts. It's a standard mini-ITX desktop motherboard and chip in an 8.66 x 8.66 x 2.55-inch chassis. (He told me he'll have a 155W external power supply.)

Sedano says he's been building computers since he was 14 and sees it as a hobby, but he's getting serious about it in some ways. EmuDeck is now a registered limited liability company in Spain (we checked!), and he says he's locked down several suppliers to make sure he'll have the components. He claims he'll provide hardware support and a warranty.

He might not even need Valve's support to make this a reality; the operating system he's preloading is Bazzite, a promising fork of the SteamOS interface with a different underlying operating system (Fedora). I've currently loaded it up on a Lenovo Legion Go and a ROG Ally X, and I'm quite impressed with how well it works. Bazzite founder Kyle Gospodnetich tells me his team gave EmuDeck its blessing, though Bazzite isn't currently helping EmuDeck tweak the software.

It's a little surprising we haven't seen many Steam boxes like this before, and Bazzite says he's not aware of any others in the works. Perhaps other companies are waiting on Valve? The Steam Deck maker told us in late 2022 that it's really excited to see other manufacturers building small SteamOS PCs — after Valve released a generic image of SteamOS 3 for those manufacturers to use.

Earlier this month, there were signs that Valve is getting closer.

If you want to tinker rather than looking for a turnkey console gaming experience, you can certainly build your own Bazzite box with EmuDeck. Or, add an HDMI dock or hub to a handheld. Or, you could potentially even do what YouTuber ETA Prime did and turn an old Steam Deck into a mini PC.