Valve Vows to Discuss Own Game Console Next Week

From X-bit Labs: Although Gabe Newell, the co-founder and managing director of Valve, has been a vocal supporter of Linux gaming for years now and his company even released Steam (a video game distribution service) client for Linux operating system earlier this year, Linux is still not a platform of choice for gaming in general. But next week the company promises to bring out a major trump for Linux, a game console.

"Next week we are 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," said Gabe Newell while delivering a keynote at LinuxCon in New Orleans, reports Ars Technica.

For well over a year Valve Software and its hardware partners have been designing a special gaming platform currently known as Steam Box. The concept of the platform is simple: Valve and its allies develop several “reference” gaming systems designed to fit into the living room and running Linux operating system and then sell them. Some of the systems are basic, affordable, and will need to rely on cloud streaming; other carry standalone high-end microprocessors and graphics processors.

Valve, which is an investor of Xi3 Corp., and Xi3 jointly demonstrated Piston ultra-small form-factor gaming PCs at Consumer Electronics Show this year. While Valve did say that there would be other Steam Box game consoles available this year in addition to Piston, it never denied that the system was indeed one of the Steam Box designs. The price of Xi3 Piston starts at $999, which seems to be prohibitively expensive as usually systems based on AMD A-series APUs cost a lot less. While Xi3 Piston is small and sleek, its price is just too high for a given performance. As a result, the very first Steam Box on the market will unlikely be truly popular and will be acquired by a fraction of end-users who expressed their interest in the device.

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