Steam Machine handheld Smach Z delayed until 2017

The team behind the Smach handheld has announced they want to show a prototype of the portable console at GamesCom. The Kickstarter campaign of the Smach Zero, now known as Smach Z, was discontinued last December. It should restart soon.

Originally announced in 2014, the project was known as Steamboy at the time. After that, the name was changed to Smach Zero and a release was planned for the end of this year. In December, the Kickstarter campaign was halted for various reasons. The team behind the console recently announced that the project has been revived and private investors have been found. In the most recent update, the team says it wants to launch a new campaign after GamesCom and show a prototype at the game fair. That way, delivery to backers should be in February or March of 2017.

One of the first stretch goals of the new campaign will be support for Windows 10, something that interested parties have been asking for for some time. Support for Android is a lot lower on the priority list, the team says. The price of the handheld will not change, which means that it will remain 199 euros. There is also talk of a Pro version of the device, which cost 449 euros during the original campaign. This would have a double amount of internal and working memory, in addition to a camera and 4G support.

The specifications of the ‘regular’ Smach Z mention an AMD Falcon soc, the benchmarks of which will be announced during the new campaign. In addition, the device has a 1080p OLED screen of 5 “and 4GB of RAM. The storage is 64GB and can be expanded with an SD card. In terms of connectivity, the Smach Z has WiFi, USB 3.0, HDMI and bluetooth.The whole thing runs on SteamOS.

The Smach Z prototype