Today is one of those days that you just wake up and read some weird things spreading across the internet. The word is out that Valve is working on a gaming console called the Steam Box. Additionally, there are suggestions that it could be revealed at this years GDC. Wait, how soon is that exactly? It’s only two days away at the time of this post as it lasts from March 5th to March 9th. So, the good news is that maybe a portion of this rumor will be put to rest sooner rather than later for those anxious gamers out there. But, if GDC falls through the rumor will then shift towards E3.
Oddly enough, there is actually quite a bit of supporting evidence that this may actually happen. However, it seems that this so called Steam Box will just be a custom PC similar to the Alienware X51. The specs are somewhat vague at the moment, but it is suppose to have an Intel Core i7 CPU, 8 GB of RAM, and a Nvidia GPU. It is also unclear if the PC will have its own Steam OS or if they will just stick with Windows, which is most likely the case. In addition, there’s a rumor that they already had a closed demo of the device at CES last January.
Continuing on, Valve has a patent for a controller that they filed last year:
So, Valve may also ship the “console” with their own controller as well. Why would Valve want to make a gaming console? Basically, the suggestions range from wanting to standardize what they feel is a decent PC to trying to compete with Apple. In addition, Valve may also be doing this to try and get more gamers to use Steam in their living room with their new Big Picture interface. While this rumor does sound rather far fetched there is some supporting evidence. Unfortunately, we will just have to wait and see what happens.
Source: theverge.com
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I hope it comes soon. I wanna play half life 3 before I die.
pc maker making a console lol.
I bet it’ll just be a mass produced cheap low/medium end PC with a wireless keyboard and mice that runs on a customized windows so it only runs a customized steam window and only buys games through steam.
oh. and Steam will sell it at below cost of (what it costs normally to build your own of the same spec) and make money through the games bought from steam.
Doubt it would be something so low end when they even mention the upgrade capablities. It’s not like you need a supercomputer nowadays for modern games lol. I am still playing everything that comes out on my 4 year old CPU and 2 year old graphics card 😛
Yeah, I mean i run all of the COD that come out easily and I only have 4g RAM and a 2.2ghz amd phenome 9550. graphics card geforce 9500. My computer is the epitome of bad right now and I can still run a lot of modern games. With the (possible) specs mentioned in the article I can see this console EASILY running modern games. Only if it actually comes out of course.
running games and running them at a decent setting and rate is completely different… if it runs at low settings, might as well as play on a console since it performs better…
my 5 year old laptop with a 2.0 ghz dual core and a go 7900 gs can run games easily… (other than battlefield 3 cause it requires direct x 10 lol) but not at a decent setting -_- (most new games at medium at 1280×720 or below)
I just see this as a gaming PC for the masses :/ (just probably not as overpriced as alienware stuff lol)
my guess is a dual core i5-2300 or something close and probably a 6850 or something. with at least 4 gb of ram. to keep the price under $400-500
that should run most games on 1920×1080 on medium/high…
Although i HOPE that they choose AMD since they don’t change their socket NEARLY as much as fucking Intel if they want users to upgrade the “console”
COD isnt really a benchmark for a having a capable PC, since the games required specs havent changed much at all since COD4
Assuming this “console” is in fact just a custom PC (like Alienware), I can see this potentially succeeding. If it is affordable like much of Valve’s products on Steam, then people would be willing to invest in these kind of computers for basic gaming.
On a side note, I am willing to bet that the recent release of the Steam app for phones is a sign that Valve is going to experiment and start to branch out to other mediums/markets (hardware being one such potential new market).