Valve announced "Steam Machines" today. I'm still going to call them Steamboxes because Steam machine sounds stupid.
Multiple Steamboxes! Yay!
It seems the "Nexus" theory was spot on. Valve will be making their own reference Steambox "prototype" and will be sending it out to some lucky people who completed their quest for beta. Third party manufacturers will come out with their own Steamboxes with different price/quality ranges.
Beginning in 2014, there will be multiple SteamOS machines to choose from, made by different manufacturers.
Valve has promised lots and lots of more information over the coming weeks, so we'll be sure to keep an eye out for that.
The Controller
So for the 99% of you that didn't read the beta agreement (I didn't either until now), here's an interesting excerpt.
1. Valve Corporation ("Valve", "We", "Us" or "Our") has developed and produced prototypes of entertainment system hardware and software, including a set-top box running custom software and a game controller (collectively: "Beta Products").
We'll definitely be seeing a controller on friday. More on the controller in yesterday's blog post.
The Beta
Valve will be launching a limited Beta program sometime this year. 300 random people that have completed the quest for beta will receive a prototype Steambox and a controller for testing.
At the time of writing there's about 55,000 people that have completed the beta badge, so good luck beating those odds.
| Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3 |
|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
| Join the Steam Universe group, make 10 Steam friends, create a public community profile and play a game in Big Picture with a controller | Complete the beta form | Get selected for the beta (What else could this mean?) |
The level 3 badge oddly resembles the planet we've been seeing in Valve's announcements.
That's it for today, not much new information but hopefully we'll see some Steambox manufacturers announcing their versions soon.