[BLOG] Valve announces STEAM Machine and Controller

[PredictedCyborg]

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Some of the biggest news this week in the gaming world has come from Valve, well known for their digital gaming client Steam as well as games such as Team Fortress 2. Over the course of five days they made three big announcements related to their long teasing of opening up gaming and revolutionising the console market. One of the central parts of this is their entry into the console market: the Steam Box. Or rather as they are now, Steam Machines.



Valve had previously released some details on their console offering, but Wednesday saw a lot more detail being revealed to the public. Valve plan to make the console very flexible, you can hack it, run operating systems other than Valve's own Steam OS upon it, there are many different manufacturers creating their own version of the console, there's even been talk of using it to build little robots (seriously, it's in the Steam Machine Q and A). However the big surprise was Valve's announcement that they plan to make available 300 prototypes for testing, which will be sent out... to the public. It's a bold move given that most companies don't make their new hardware available to the wider-audiences until it's time to start selling it to them, but one that could work out and certainly fits into Valve's 'open gaming' strategy.



The lucky participants will be (mostly) chosen at random, although Valve say a few spaces (about 30) have been reserved for community members who have contributed the most to Steam in some way. There is a beta 'quest' available to enter Steam accounts into the draw for the prototypes which mostly requires completing a set of tasks that make use of Steam's many functions (for example, one condition is you need at least 10 people on your friend list). The 'beta quest' will be open until October 25th.



Friday saw the final of the promised three announcements of the week with the link between Monday's Steam OS software and Wednesday's Steam Machine hardware: a hackable, programmable controller. Beta versions were shown off and a few working prototypes made so invited game developers could get hands-on with the new hardware and test its functionality with their own games in mind. The controller's main selling point is its lack of the traditional double joystick, replacing these with two trackpads as well as a touchscreen in the centre (although the latter was missing from the tester prototypes). There are buttons too but not where you'd expect to find them. Numbering sixteen at all, two flank the inner side of each trackpad and another two are on the back of the controller.



Customers can set up the buttons to work any way they want however and the controller is also supposed to feature a mode that allows it to function as a mouse and keyboard for those games in the Steam library that require it. The general view from those who have tested it seems to be it works well, even if it take a little getting used to at first.



Both pieces of hardware are said to be planned for retail next year, but depending on how much the selected beta testers share online (which Valve encourages them to do by the way) we could know a bit more about both before the release.