[VERGE] Valve’s next mystery gadget may be imminent

This is the best summary I could come up with:

South Korea’s National Radio Research Agency has certified a “low power wireless device” from Valve with the designation “RC-V1V-1030,” as spotted by @dxpl at Arca.live (via Brad Lynch).

The South Korean certification tells us basically nothing about the device, save that it uses 5GHz Wi-Fi, which most computers already have at this point.

But telecommunications regulatory agencies typically don’t require certification for internal prototypes — only if you’re going to import at least a small quantity of devices in a country, and maybe put them on sale.

There are other hints in Valve’s own code, however — Phoronix’s Michael Larabel spotted that Valve has added new changes around the Steam Deck’s Van Gogh APU, including the mysterious product name “Galileo” and product family “Sephiroth.” (Aerith, closely connected to Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII, is another name for the Deck’s APU.)

While Larabel initially suggests it might just be a Steam Deck refresh reference board, Valve’s Greg Coomer told me in 2021 that the Steam Deck’s existing APU might make sense in a standalone VR headset.

A standalone VR headset codenamed Deckard was at least being prototyped inside Valve, sources confirmed to YouTuber Brad Lynch and Ars Technica back in 2021, and some patent images made the rounds last June.

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