Valve partners with Lenovo to expand SteamOS beyond Steam Deck, challenging Windows' gaming dominance with optimized handheld experience.

Valve is making a notable shift with its portable gaming strategy as Lenovo debuted a new edition of its Legion Go

It's official: Valve's SteamOS will be available on more platforms soon, and the first handheld PC gaming device to adopt the operating system will be the new Lenovo Legion Go S. At CES 2025, it was revealed that the slim Lenovo unit will run on the Linux-based OS--, the same one used on Valve's Steam Deck.

The Steam Deck is no longer the only SteamOS-based gaming handheld on the market. A more expensive Windows version of the Legion Go S will be available first.

The Legion Go S is a streamlined PC gaming handheld and the first with SteamOS since Steam Deck; the Go 2 is a full sequel. The Legion Pro 7i gaming laptop also gets a silicon boost.

Valve’s handheld device, the Steam Deck, wasn’t the first portable gaming PC ever created, but it is by the far the most successful. And like Steam becoming the de facto way people play PC games in 2025,

Lenovo has finally announced a new line of Legion Go handheld PCs, with one that will come installed with SteamOS out of the box. The new model is called the Legion Go S, and it's the world's first handheld PC from a third-party manufacturer using Valve's operating system.

Windows 11 is often cited as the worst thing about handheld gaming PCs - but it looks like Microsoft could soon fix this.

Microsoft plans to merge Windows and Xbox for handheld gaming in 2025 Valve's SteamOS aims to be integrated into all gaming handhelds Microsoft must succeed with its hybrid to compete with Valve's expansion efforts.

The Steam Deck has been the biggest PC gaming hardware story of the last few years. So it’s no surprise that the idea of running SteamOS (perhaps the most celebrated component of that machine) on other handhelds like the Legion Go S is also a big deal.