Developers React to Valve's Steam Boxes, Steam Controller

From DailyTech: On Wednesday and Friday, Valve Corp. unveiled some of its plans for living room console dominance that began with the unveil of a Linux-based operating system designed to cater to home-theater PC (HTPC) and console gaming fans.

On Wednesday, Valve teased Steam Boxes and announced a beta testing program, which will give away 300 free consoles to testers who complete a basic set of requirements involving the Steam game distribution network and assorted paperwork:

Notably Valve did show off any actual hardware on Wednesday, despite being rumored to be working with 15 to 20 top PC makers on Steam Boxes. This is not entirely surprising, given that Valve's intention for some time now has been to ship the Steam Boxes sometime in 2014. Valve writes:

Entertainment is not a one-size-fits-all world. We want you to be able to choose the hardware that makes sense for you, so we are working with multiple partners to bring a variety of Steam gaming machines to market during 2014, all of them running SteamOS.

The biggest mystery is what exactly is in the some 15 to 20 Steam Box designs Valve has commissioned. Quasi-CEO Gabe Newell had previously told The Verge that hardware would be split into "good" (~$100 USD), "better" ($300+ USD), and "best" hardware tiers, with the top level having no cap on the allowed hardware or price.

Some of the commissioned devices are rumored to have a fourth generation Intel Corp. (INTC) Core i7-Series processor, an undisclosed NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA) graphics processing unit, and 8 GB of DRAM. But Valve shed no further light on the specifications mystery at its somewhat vaporous Wednesday "unveil".

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