First Images of the Steam Box Released

Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times

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.

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Steam OS Update

With the announcement of the Steam OS, there's been a lot of speculation (and there still is) on what exactly this new product will do. Today, on the steam group, an update was sent out with the hardware specs. These new systems that they're working could easily be built from home and are fully customizable should you feel the need to buy the bits and pieces.

For those of you not so hardware savvy who won't be changing out the entire machine as soon as they get it, here are the beta specs:

More to come on the controller later, but for now this is enough to get me as excited as a little kid on Christmas.

~ Ametis

Steam Box Announcement

Yesterday: the Steam OS and now today: the Steam Box. Rather than releasing one machine, Valve is apparently releasing multiple.

Entertainment is not a one-size-fits-all world. We want you to be able to choose the hardware that makes sense for you, so we are working with multiple partners to bring a variety of Steam gaming machines to market during 2014, all of them running SteamOS.

Not only that, but before these machines are released, you could be eligible for testing one of them. Only 300 people will get this lucky chance and the way to do it is as follows:

THE HARDWARE BETA ELIGIBILITY QUEST:

Before October 25, log in to Steam and then visit your quest page to track your current status towards beta test eligibility

1. Join the Steam Universe community group

2. Agree to the Steam Hardware Beta Terms and Conditions

3. Make 10 Steam friends (if you haven't already)

4. Create a public Steam Community profile (if you haven't already)

5. Play a game using a gamepad in Big Picture mode

This will then apparently give you a badge and you'll be in the running for the beta testing of the new system.

Aside from the beta, you should expect these new systems in stores (all with different specs depending on what experience they plan to provide) in 2014.

~ Ametis