Valve Releasing Steam Machines Next Year
Let’s say you were excited about SteamOS, the living room-focused OS meant to make it easier to play PC games on HDTVs. If you were thinking of buying a new PC to hook up to your HDTV, why not consider a Steam Machine? These boxes running SteamOS are the second of Valve’s three big announcements this week. Valve is working with multiple manufacturers to bring Steam Machines with varying specs to retail in 2014. But before those are released, Valve is testing a high-performance prototype machine, and you could be one of the 300 people to test it for free, if you’re eligible.
The prototypes will ship by the end of this year, so I’d get around to qualifying quickly if you’re interested in free hardware. But if you don’t qualify and also don’t want to buy a pre-built machine with SteamOS (even though it’s upgradeable and hackable in any way you choose), you can absolutely build your own PC and install SteamOS on it. The Steam Machines will obviously work with a keyboard and mouse, but it will also support gamepads, which Valve promises more details on shortly. As much as I want the third announcement to concern Half-life 3 being made in a brand-new Source 2 engine running on SteamOS, I think it’s likely that the third announcement will concern how to control SteamOS and Steam Machines, with the possibility of showcasing a Steam controller prototype.
Source: Steam