At first glance, Valve’s prototype Steam Machine resembles Microsoft’s Xbox One, but then you get a good long look at it and realize that, hey, it also looks like it’s own thing. Valve only announced Steam Machines in September, but now we have a detailed look at the system, courtesy of a hands-on report from The Verge.
The machine itself is only slightly larger than the Xbox 360, but manages to fit into it everything you’d find inside a decent gaming PC. The parts inside all vent out of different areas of the box to prevent overheating and other nasty situations: the CPU vents out of the top, the power supply has the side to itself, and the graphics card takes the back. Of course, this is Valve’s version of the Steam Machine, so who knows what other manufacturers will come up with. Incidentally, that’s not something that we’ll have long to wonder about, as Valve’s hardware/software partners will reveal their Steam Machines early next year. More specifically, in January during the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show.
Meanwhile, when it comes to the games on the machine, not only will the Linux-based platform have quite a few, but it will also have a system designed to tell you which games can run on your Steam Machine and what parts you’ll need to play the games it currently can’t.
“It’s one of these places where Steam is particularly and perhaps uniquely positioned to be able to actually help customers… we’re sitting at the nexus of these hardware specs, so we can harvest data about what’s going on, and repeat it back in a digestible form to every Steam user who cares,” said Greg Coomer, one of Valve’s designers.
But you can ‘t talk about Valve and games without bringing up Half-Life 3. No, the game hasn’t been announced or anything (you’d know by now), but Valve isn’t going to make it a SteamOS exclusive either. Said Valve’s Doug Lombardi, “It’s against our philosophy to put a game in jail and say it only works on Steam Machines.”
Steam Machines are expected to arrive in mid-2014, and they’ll come in various sizes, specs and prices. 300 prototype boxes will be sent out to beta testers before this year is out, so we’re sure to get some more information on the system before next year.