From rumors of the announcement of the next-generation AMD Ryzen Z2 chipset to various hardware leaks, including the low-cost Lenovo Legion Go S, CES 2025 is likely to be big for PC gaming handhelds. The Future,” and as noted in an email received by The Verge, Valve, developer of Steam Deck and SteamOS, will also be on stage with Lenovo.

Surely this can only mean one thing, right? I mean, based on Valve's “Powered By SteamOS” branding guidelines and my reports of performance and battery life gains by turning PC gaming handhelds into Steam Decks, Lenovo's SteamOS-powered handhelds Steam Deck is a tacit assurance that Lenovo will release a handheld with SteamOS.

Reliable leaker Evan Blass has also revealed (in a now-deleted X post) that the Lenovo Legion Go S will have a Steam button, and he will be speaking at the January 7 “Lenovo Legion x AMD: The Future of Gaming Handhelds” and you can see all the pieces coming together.

Pierre-Loup Griffais, co-designer of SteamOS and Steam Deck, is Valve's special guest at this event. And if I were a betting man, I would tie these threads together and start predicting a lineup of AMD Ryzen Z2 with SteamOS and Lenovo Legion Go with Z2 Extreme.

That's not to say Windows won't be part of this. Jason Ronald, Microsoft's VP of Xbox Gaming Devices and Ecosystem, will also be on stage with Lenovo.

However, as Tony Polanco stated in his review of the Asus ROG Ally X, Windows “absolutely sucks” on gaming handhelds, and hardware manufacturers like Lenovo seem to be responding by giving the option with SteamOS It seems. Translation: users might be able to choose between Valve or Windows at the checkout screen.

And since the Xbox gaming handheld is still a long way off, this could be Valve's chance to spread its dominance and bring its great OS and storefront to more hardware. All we can hope for is that Ronald will ditch the traditional start screen and jump on stage to talk about a more handheld-centric gaming version of Windows.