Play Hard Gaming: First Images of the Steam Box Released

Valve, the Bellevue based company which announced the Steam Machines a couple of of weeks ago, finally has the first prototypes. Seattle Times published an article about it earlier today.

Valve's Steam controller is currently being manufactured in-house by Valve employees themselves

The final Steam Controller design, announced in late September, does not feature thumbsticks, but rather two trackpads that Valve says support a variety of games and genres, from first-person shooters to strategy games

While it is unclear how 65 Million Steam Users will take Steam Machines, it certainly is interesting, with the release of the PS4 and the Xbox One less than a month away, Valve's entry will be something to look out for.

Valve's Steam Machine prototype will feature the following system specifications:

GPU: some units with Nvidia Titan, some GTX780, some GTX760, and some GTX660
CPU: some boxes with Intel : i7-4770, some i5-4570, and some i3
RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600 (CPU), 3GB DDR5 (GPU)
Hard drive: 1TB/8GB Hybrid SSHD
Power Supply: Internal 450w 80Plus Gold
Dimensions: approx. 12 x 12.4 x 2.9 in high

Greg Comer from Valve said, “you won’t see an exclusive killer app for SteamOS from us. We’re not going to be doing that kind of thing.” as Valve announced that they wont be making "SteamOS Exclusives"

The Seattle Times report suggests that a "variety" of Steam Machines, as well as entertainment applications for the system, will be announced in January at the Consumer Electronics Show. Units will then go on sale sometime in mid-2014, though not everyone will have to wait as Valve said it was going to ship 300 of these Steam Machines to Steam users, free of charge, for the purposes of testing.

Images by Ken Lambert / Seattle Times.

Source 1, Source 2.

- Sephie