Gabe Newell confirms Steam Box

[MaydaX]

Valve isn't just attacking the living room; the Steam Box will be designed to work across multiple screens in the home using networking standards like Miracast, ideally allowing users to effortlessly transition between rooms and monitors to enjoy gaming and other content. But Valve's goal isn't just to put a box into everyone's living room, it's to help build an ecosystem of content developers — including the gamers themselves.

 

We've heard lots of rumors about the Steam Box, including that Valve's own hardware would be "tightly controlled." Can you tell us more about Valve's own hardware effort?

The way we sort of think of it is sort of "Good, Better," or "Best." So, Good are like these very low-cost streaming solutions that you’re going to see that are using Miracast or Grid. I think we’re talking about in-home solutions where you’ve got low latency. "Better" is to have a dedicated CPU and GPU and that’s the one that’s going to be controlled. Not because our goal is to control it; it’s been surprisingly difficult when we say to people "don’t put an optical media drive in there" and they put an optical media drive in there and you’re like "that makes it hotter, that makes it more expensive, and it makes the box bigger." Go ahead. You can always sell the Best box, and those are just whatever those guys want to manufacture. [Valve's position is]: let's build a thing that’s quiet and focuses on high performance and quiet and appropriate form factors.

 

So are most of these going to be Linux-based Steam Boxes?

We’ll come out with our own and we’ll sell it to consumers by ourselves. That’ll be a Linux box, [and] if you want to install Windows you can. We’re not going to make it hard. This is not some locked box by any stretch of the imagination. We also think that a controller that has higher precision and lower latency is another interesting thing to have.

 

Do you envision a Steam Box connecting to other screens outside the living room?

The Steam Box will also be a server. Any PC can serve multiple monitors, so over time, the next-generation (post-Kepler) you can have one GPU that’s serving up eight simulateneous game calls. So you could have one PC and eight televisions and eight controllers and everybody getting great performance out of it. We’re used to having one monitor, or two monitors -- now we’re saying lets expand that a little bit.

 

Rest can be read at

 

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/8/3852144/gabe-newell-interview-steam-box-future-of-gaming

[RiskyBiskit]

People are bound to ask "How much is this going to be?" so i thought id do some digging around.

 

Quoted from examiner.com

With the Steam Box recently being confirmed by the company's head man Gabe Newell, Valve also discussed the pricing tiers that will be given for the upcoming console.

According to a report from Gameranx yesterday, Valve will have three pricing tiers for their upcoming system.

The three prices will be named as "Good, Better and Best."

The bottom tier of pricing looks like it will cost people around $99 to acquire, with the "Better" price costing around $300.

For those looking to go all out for their Steam Box, the "Best" price will depend solely upon how much money each individual is willing to spend on their system, as long as it is more than the "Better" pricing model, of course.

This model is likened to how people choose to build their own PCs, with managing the cost with the type of specs they can place in it.

It's a rather revolutionary, yet so simple method Valve seems to be implementing in their system, and it will be interesting to see how consumers react to it.

One would assume each system will have to have a base specs setup for it being compatible with all games because that is one obstacle that could stand in the way for some gamers.

What do you think about this potential model?

 

Seems very resonable.

Edited January 10, 2013 by CR-Typhoon

[HSMagnet]

this is the best comment i have seen

 

I'm pretty sure you will be able to hook up a USB keyboard/mouse to it. But it's just the fact that they're going after the 360 market instead of just trying to target the PC hardware market. Sorry but I know Valve has a lot of $$ but they'll go bankrupt trying to compete in that market. They should totally just try and dominate the PC hardware gaming market. "Get the Steam Box if you want to play PC games. No more dealing with building your own PC, all games on Steam are now optimized for Steam Box hardware." You try to put that thing up against 360 and it's going to do poorly to OK. PC gamers who want to game on the couch are just going to game on their 360's IMO.