Gabe Newell Confirms a Push for Steam on Living Room PCs and a Valve PC

[Shawn Zipay]

In a brief interview granted last night after the 2012 VGAs, Valve's Gabe Newell kind of confirmed that the company is looking to get a line of living room PCs out there with Steam pre-installed on them. Furthermore, Newell said that Valve will "create its own distinct package" that they hope to release to end consumers.

Newell said he's expecting a lot of different companies to release these types of packages—"We'll do it but we also think other people will as well," he told me—and that Valve's hardware might not be as open-source or as malleable as your average computer.

"Well certainly our hardware will be a very controlled environment," he said. "If you want more flexibility, you can always buy a more general purpose PC. For people who want a more turnkey solution, that's what some people are really gonna want for their living room.

"The nice thing about a PC is a lot of different people can try out different solutions, and customers can find the ones that work best for them."

In related news, when asked about what software the company was working on, Newell merely re-confirmed that Valve is hard at work on their next-generation game engine. He said that this new engine will also work on next-generation consoles.

Perhaps the big question here is, if Valve's living room PC solution is a Linux based offering, how many of you would jump ship away from Windows? Would your answer stay the same if the PC they offer eliminates the hassle of dealing with new driver updates, setting up new hardware, and the like?

(via Kotaku)

[jimykx]

I really need to know more about this to form a valid opinion. I mean, It sounds good if it is some sort of a cheaper gaming pc alternative but would it support all the games I want? even those that are not on steam such as BF3?
Also, if it is just some sort of console (doesn't support tech innovation) with a valve OS, then no.

[Porkfist]

Doubtful I would pick up their "console". This is why I'm a PC gamer, because I love all the flexibility it affords me. Even though I would love to use Linux for games, it's not widely adopted by many game developers, but if it gets there who knows I might switch over.

I think a turnkey solution is more aimed at current console gamers, although using steam on a PC is as close to a console experience as I care to get. I do like a lot of Valve's products though, so I hope it does well, whatever it is.

[cikame]

Yes, confuse game developers with more fixed hardware machines :S.
You can release something like Crysis 3 on Steam and people will buy it, alot of people will try to run it and find they need to upgrade their pc's so that's what they do. What happens when Crysis 4 is released and the Steam Box can't run it?
Either the developer has to account for yet another specific hardware set, or reduce their pc graphics targets.

[Shawn Zipay]

I figure that there will be an "updated" Steam Box model on the same sort of release period as consoles. If they adhere to that, there won't be much need to upgrade that system outside of every few years, which most PC gamers do anyway. Especially since developers cater to the consoles and won't make significant pushes that will necessitate upgrades for PC gamers with all of those multi-platform games they love to release.