Valve is reportedly readying to distribute prototype versions of the Steam Box to customers.
Valve boss Gabe Newell says distribution could kick of in as little as three months, offering a compact PC-based box designed to bring the popular Steam videogame service to the living room.
Speaking with BBC [as cited by CVG], Newell stressed that the Steam Box is still in the development stage and a controller still needs to be finalized, but Valve are working with partners, “trying to nail down how fast we can make it.”
“We’ll be giving out some prototypes to customers to gauge their reactions, I guess, in the next three to four months,” claims Newell.
“There are noise issues and heat issues and being able to [deal with] that while still offering a powerful enough gaming experience is the challenge in building it.
“The main thing that’s holding us up right now is we have a couple of different controller prototypes that we’re using. And that’s one of things actually we’ll be giving to customers; we’ll just give them a couple of different ones and then actually look to see what the differences are in their play patterns when they have those different controllers,” he added.
The Steam Box will essentially compete with consoles.
