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Valve to Release a Console?
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-In a recent interview with Penny Arcade, Valve Managing Director Gabe Newell seemed to express an interest in joining the hardware market, which many think is an inkling towards a Valve console, nicknamed the Steam Box. Rumors are that, if such a thing is in the works, it would be announced at the next E3 or GDC. Sources say that the basic specs of the Steam Box will include a Core i7 chip, 8GB of RAM, and will run on an nVidia card. The device is supposedly able to run any standard PC games, such as The Witcher 2 and World of Warcraft, and would allow for rival services such as EA's Origin to be loaded onto it. Most of the talk about the "Steam Box" is speculation, but there are some hard facts that hint towards Valve hardware. About a year ago, Valve filed a patent for a "Video game controller having user swappable control components". A quote from the patent application itself gives us some insight as to what this controller will be like.
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-We are also told that Valve's experiments with biometrics will come to fruition with the conception of this new piece of hardware, adding perhaps a whole new level of interactivity in video games. (As if we've never heard that line before.) The inclusion of Valve's Big Picture Mode, shown to us on Valve's website at http://www.steampowe...ebigpicture.php, will allow smooth display on televisions and PC displays alike.
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What effect could the release of such a system have on the console market, and indeed video games in general? How well would "Steam Box" compete against the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, and the PC? Would the hardware included with the console and controllers really change the way we interact with the worlds of fantasy that the game developers immerse us in when we start up a game? All up to speculation at this point. If one thing's for sure, it's that the release of the "Steam Box" might throw a wrench into some of the plans Microsoft has with the Xbox 720, Sony with the Playstation 4, or Nintendo with the Wii U.
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