At last, Valve has admitted it: The giant of PC gaming plans to release a living room video game console based on its Steam distribution platform. The idea of a “Steam Box” has been somewhat of an obsession for the gaming world lately. Rumors about the product have been circulating for months, and Valve has stirred the pot with its own hints before. It’s looked to hire industrial designers, released a TV-friendly version of its software called “Big Picture” and has gone on record talking about its desire to make innovative hardware. But in a recent interview with Kotaku, Valve head Gabe Newell gave the best indication yet that the company’s actually working on a console. “We’ll do it but we also think other people will as well,” Newell said, referring to other hardware makers who might release their own living room PCs along with Valve. Newell suggested that Valve’s hardware may run on a Linux-based operating system, in a “very controlled environment,” while users who wanted more flexibility could go with a more general purpose PC. Why would a Steam game console be important? Several reasons: Death to the Disc While the established console players hang onto optical discs for dear life, Steam has already moved to a download-first mentality. And what a utopia it is. No more phone calls to GameStop to see if they have any more copies of that game you neglected to pre-order. No more going to the store at all, for that matter. Lament the lack of a used game trade if you will, but in its place Steam lets its back catalog thrive, with amazing deals on high-quality games–not just the stuff no one wanted to keep. The sooner this becomes the norm, the better. A Steam game console will only speed up the process. Cloud Nine for PC Gamers Steam has a chance to tie together the worlds of console and PC gaming in ways that Microsoft never did. It already has a cloud infrastructure for saved games, so players can pick up on![]()
