Valve talks Steam Box, don't expect one this year

A lot of rumours exist about the Steam Box - Valve's own dedicated gaming machine - and those rumours were exacerbated yesterday at the annual Consumer Electronics Show when a company known as Xi3 Corporation displayed a new fist sized modular computer backed by Valve called the Piston.




Today however, in an email conversation with Engadget, Valve Hardware Engineer Ben Krasnow explained some details of the company's upcoming branch into the hardware section. Primarily however, he laid one important rumour to rest - Valve would not be announcing any kind of Steam Box in 2013 - those reports had been... misinterpreted.

Valve are at CES this year however, talking to hardware manufacturers about their plans to move into the physical plane. The Verge spoke to Valve's main man - Gabe "Gaben" Newell himself - and he was happy to reveal some of the company's plans for the future.

Alleviating the concern many gamers had at the first news of a potential Steam Box, Newell explained that they aren't looking at a closed, console-style system. Third party manufacturers will be building the devices and Valve will build their own Steam Box too - it will run Linux, but you will be more than welcome to install Windows on it if you choose. While Valve have a few restrictions on some Steam Box designs, Newell explains that it depends on what kind of machine they are trying to build:

The way we sort of think of it is sort of "Good, Better," or "Best." So, Good are like these very low-cost streaming solutions that you’re going to see that are using Miracast or Grid. I think we’re talking about in-home solutions where you’ve got low latency. "Better" is to have a dedicated CPU and GPU and that’s the one that’s going to be controlled. Not because our goal is to control it; it’s been surprisingly difficult when we say to people "don’t put an optical media drive in there" and they put an optical media drive in there and you’re like "that makes it hotter, that makes it more expensive, and it makes the box bigger." Go ahead. You can always sell the Best box, and those are just whatever those guys want to manufacture.

The entire interview is an excellent read, with Newell going into Valve's work with controllers and biometrics, the newly announced Shield, competing with Apple and Microsoft and the future. What do you think - will you buy a Steam Box? Or will you just build your own PC? Let us know in the comments below!