After months of rumors, Valve's Steam Box might actually become a reality next week.
As reported by Ars Technica, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell this week promised more details about the fabled gadget next week, though he did not actually utter the words "Steam box."
"Next week we're going to be rolling out more information about how we get there and what are the hardware opportunities we see for bringing Linux into the living room," Newell said at LinuxCon in New Orleans.
Reports of a Steam Box from Valve first appeared last year. The idea is that the device would be a customizable console, allowing you to modify the software and run whatever games you want, something that's not possible with top consoles like the Xbox or PlayStation.
At CES, Xi3 said it received an investment from Valve, though no other details were released. But it got tongues wagging at the thought of the Steam Box finally coming to market.
At the time, Xi3 unveiled its "grapefruit-sized" Piston Console, which the company said was designed specifically to support Valve's Steam and its Big Picture mode "for residential and LAN party computer gaming on larger high-def screens."
By March, Xi3 started taking pre-orders for its Piston Console, which was dubbed the first unofficial Steam Box. At $999.99, though, it wasn't cheap. The gadget is expected in time for the 2013 holiday season.
Valve's Steam for Linux efforts, however, date back more than a year. In July 2012, Valve confirmed that it was building a version of Steam for Linux to run on Ubuntu 12.04. The move was sparked in part due to Newell's concern that Windows 8 would turn out to be "a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space." A closed beta arrived in November, and Valve released its Steam for Linux client as a free public download in Feb. 2012.
The move, Newell said this week, proved to "development partners that we really were serious about this Linux thing we were talking about."
For more, check out Newell's full presentation in the video below.
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