Just a few days ago, Valve announced their Steam OS, a software that would take the Steam experience to the living room. Now they’ve revealed the next step– the Steam Machine.
It’s been speculated that Valve would enter the console race, but how they would do so was largely guesswork. The Steam Machine, as it’s now officially known, is a fully hackable, affordable and totally optional substitute for a gaming PC.
Perhaps the most exciting part of this announcement is that Valve will be sending 300 Steam Machines out into the wild for qualified Steam users. To be qualified for the beta, you must:
- Join the Steam Universe Community Group
- Agree to the Steam Hardware Terms and Conditions
- Have 10 Steam Friends
- Create a public Steam profile
- Using a game pad, play a game in “Big Picture” mode.
The Steam Machine will come in several different varieties, but the details are yet to be finalized. That means that we don’t know the price, design, specifications, or release date. We do know, however, that you can customize the hardware, freely putting whatever OS on it you’d like. It also has access to the entire Steam library, provided you are able to stream in-home. Only a few hundred games are Steam OS compatible.
The third and final announcement will come very soon, and we’re very excited to see what Valve has to close out this week of huge announcements.
