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Gabe Newell isn’t quite being the fountain of information we’d like him to be right now, but having been cornered by the Verge, he let slip a few choice details on the incoming Steam Box. Valve’s going big here, and its plan is pretty console-killing ambitious.
First off, Valve will actually sell its own branded Steam Box, not just rely on Xi3 and others to produce PC boxes to a spec list. It’ll come packing Linux, but it won’t be locked down, as we’ve heard before, so you can install Windows on it if that’s your thing.
Newell says that motion gaming is lame, and that what Valve’s doing is all biometric. The controllers that ship with Valve’s Steam Box will detect what your body is doing through a range of sensors. Also, eye-tracking seems to be a big thing for Newell, as he labelled it “super important” — OK then.
Forget ‘Piston‘ — Valves internal code-name for its Steam Box is ‘Bigfoot’. And apparently it’ll be much more than just a PC-based console. It’ll also allow you to use it as a server, with “eight televisions and eight controllers” all hooked up to it. Basically, a one box LAN party, which sounds kind of awesome.
Anyway, no really juicy details like when, where, how, and how much, but then, did you really expect that from CES? Wait for E3 and hopefully we’ll get more out of the Half-life legends, but in the meantime, check out the rest of the interview over at [The Verge via Kotaku]
Valve Has Plenty of Boxes, But No Steam Box
Maybe HL3 will come pre-installed.
Maybe.
Or not.
Probably just HL2 Episode 3
That naming system had me confused for years, I only worked out that HL2 Episodes 1 and 2 weren’t just the first and second half of HL2 after a friend gifted me them on Steam. I just kinda gave up on the series after HL2, on the assumption it had finished
.
Props for recognising that HL3!=EP3. It really annoys me when people call the latter the former.
Valve has said that HL2 E3 has been canceled and they are going to make HL3 instead.
[[Citation needed]]
Curious to hear more
Finding sources for stuff that was said years ago is pretty hard; if I find it I will link, but basically they originally said HL2E3 was going to be the same size as the original HL2 and then a few years later they said they changed the name of HL2E3 into Half Life 3.
They started work on Source Engine 2 after Half Life E3 had started, so it is likely they are re-writing it for Source 2.
That sounds really impressive, especially the LAN party thing.
It’s a wonder that nobody has really thought of making a truly asynchronous consumer system (that isn’t a server). Imagine one PC/Console that your whole family is using, but doing their own thing with in their separate rooms at the same time etc… That would be great!
imagine the power needed for several people to play games on that little thing?
I might just get that because I think it LOOKS amazing.
Kind of an X shaped Box…
I’ll stick to keyboard and mouse thanx.
Plug one in via USB then
I hope they make it work! I’m kind quite excited about this! I just hope they can get it out quickly! Ideally, less than 12 months! (I hate long hypes)
why? what will it offer you over a medium spec gaming PC? apart from crapper gfx and no br/dvd drive?
Im hoping this will provide PC spec gaming in a small box that sits under the tv
dream on with something that size. my gfx card is bigger than that
He doesn’t say ‘motion gaming is lame’. Just that they can’t find a satisfactory way of doing it and he then goes on to say that perhaps its a “lack of imagination on our part”. He also says that he likes Wii Sports!
Just thought I’d clarify for ya
OK, I’ll concede Valve’s implementation of motion gaming is lame
but seeing as it’s all internal, we’ll just have to take Gabe’s word for it.
Yeah, I’d like to see how the ‘biometric’ gaming takes off!
Really hope this turns out a success. Love the idea of a steam-linked dedicated ‘pc-gaming’ unit that will take care of all that without having to worry about the specs/space of my day-to-day machine. Although, to be fair, I hardly have time to game anyway, but the option would be nice.
i cant imagine this little thing having too much grunt, for the size…
http://de.ign.com/pictures/articles/17303/239514.jpg
This might be a silly question to some but here goes. What is the steam box exactly is it a stand alone console as in is this the only thing you will need to play stem games or will you have to have a Pc as well.
Question 2 how can something so small have enough power to play games such as fallout and the upcoming gta v??