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Valve disassociates itself from xi3
Valve declared it's not working on any current projects with Piston creator Xi3. Speaking to Eurogamer, Valve's Doug Lombardi said his company "began some exploratory work with Xi3 last year, but currently has no involvement in any product of theirs."Alongside the Piston's reveal earlier this year, the device designed specifically with Steam support in mind, Xi3 announced Valve had invested in the PC company, which may in part be what Lombardi referred to in his statement. However, Valve later made it clear Xi3's Piston is not its own much-anticipated Steam Box, of which boss Gabe Newell said Valve aims to have prototypes for customer evaluation in the next three to four months.As for Xi3's $999 Piston, the shiny miniature box is available for pre-order now, with the device expected to ship "in time for" the holiday season this year.
Pre-orders open for Xi3's 'Piston' PC, $100 off during SXSW
Xi3's Steam-focused PC "console," the Piston, is now available for pre-order, the company announced yesterday. The tiny, $999 box includes a 128 gig solid-state drive that can be upgraded to 512 gigs for an additional $750 (for real, SSDs aren't cheap, y'all), eight gigs of RAM and a 3.2 Ghz quad-core processor.Any pre-orders placed between now and 11:59 p.m. Central on March 17, however, will have a smooth Benjamin shaved off the price. Pre-orders are expected to ship "in time for the 2013 Holiday Season," according to Xi3's announcement. Further information is expected to surface during the course of Austin's ongoing SXSW Interactive Festival.
Newell: Valve sharing Steam Box prototypes within four months
Valve will give Steam Box prototypes to "customers" within the next three or four months, bossman Gabe Newell told the BBC. Newell didn't specify if these customers were developers, anyone in the gaming public or your cat, but he suggested that Valve is focused on the Steam Box's development."We're working with partners, trying to nail down exactly how fast we can make it. We're also working hard on the input side to try to take a step forward in terms of the kinds of games you can play," Newell said. "We'll be giving out some prototypes to customers to get their reactions, I'd guess in the next three or four months."Valve has a few controller prototypes now and will ship those along with the Steam Box. We've long heard of Valve's love affair with biometrics, and some form of player feedback will be implemented with the hardware."What we've found is you can directly measure player state and it turns out to be very useful," Newell said. He continued, "You need to be able to directly measure how aroused the player is, what their heart rate is, things like that, in order to continue to offer them a new experience each time they play."
Microsoft: Valve isn't a threat to consoles; everyone is wary of Apple
Microsoft doesn't view Valve as a competitor in the console universe, Microsoft President of Interactive Entertainment Business Don Mattrick said during Microsoft's TechForum. Valve is "doing some innovative stuff," Mattrick says, but when it comes to direct competition, "no.""The scale of products and things that are being brought to market are probably a little bit richer when I look at Sony, Nintendo, Apple and Google," Mattrick says.Valve boss Gabe Newell recently noted that Apple is the Steam Box's biggest threat, since it already controls such a large portion of the market with the App Store. Nat Brown, the man who gave the original Xbox its name and former Microsoft leader, also sees Apple's potential to own the console game."Apple, if it chooses to do so, will simply kill PlayStation, Wii U and Xbox by introducing an open 30 percent-cut app/game ecosystem for Apple TV," Brown writes.Valve's foray into the console space includes an emphasis on cheap, in-home streaming systems and Linux. Valve's PC distribution client, Steam, launched its Linux service in February and during that month it claimed 2.02 percent of all Steam users. By comparison, Mac users accounted for 3.07 percent in February.
Report: Valve fires dozens of hardware, Android staff [Update 2]
Valve let go "several" employees on Tuesday, Gamasutra reported, following a tweet from hardware designer Jeri Ellsworth that read, "Yup. Got fired today. Time for new exciting projects."Initial reports from employees included the phrases "great cleansing" and "large decisions," and a few claimed as many as 25 people were affected, though this number is unconfirmed, Gamasutra reported. The layoffs hit more than one department, including Android and hardware staff.Ellsworth, at least, confirmed her own firing. She began working on next-gen gaming hardware at Valve, specifically living room PC controllers, in 2012. Ellsworth was concerned with transforming keyboard and mouse controls to a gamepad in a way that wouldn't interfere with current Steam game designs, or turn off those more comfortable with a traditional controller.Valve's recent focus has been on the Steam Box, a hardware system that allows PC streaming and gaming on living room TVs. Ellsworth worked on controller prototypes alongside the launch of Big Picture Mode, a Steam interface designed for controller navigation.We've contacted Valve for more information about the layoffs.Update: Develop reports that Valve's Director of Business Development, Jason Holtman, left the company. Valve has yet to respond to requests for comment.Update 2: Valve's employee page changed significantly sometime in the past month, as demonstrated by this comparison from Garry's Mod creator Garry Newman. There are eight names gone in the latest version: TF2 art lead Moby Francke, former Weta man Keith Huggins, Half-Life 2 programmer Tom Leonard, Portal team member Realm Lovejoy, Half-Life man Marc Nagel, ex-Lord of the Rings animator Bay Raitt, engine programmer Elan Ruskin, and Jason Holtman, mentioned above.
Gabe Newell's DICE keynote: Steam Box price point 'much, much lower' than living room devices
Valve co-founder Gabe Newell didn't drop any major announcement bombs during his DICE keynote address, but he did provide insight into Valve's current, internal approach to the gaming industry. Newell discussed the evolution of Steam software within the context of future hardware, notably Valve's Steam Box, and stressed the continued importance of the PC.As for the Steam Box's in-home PC streaming system, Newell said it would be a cheap addition to any TV, starting at $100 and eventually hitting $0. "The price point that's going to be hit is going to be much, much lower than things we've traditionally seen in living room devices. Better, it's basically a PC in the console form factor and at the console price point. There's nothing really magical about the hardware – this is the great thing about PC, is that it's been evolving so quickly."Businesswise, make the in-home streaming experience a great one and it could serve as a gateway to high-end PC gaming, Newell said: "A user who has a great experience using in-home streaming is going to be much more likely to upgrade to a PC in a console form factor and then continue to invest."The Steam Box will hinge on in-home streaming rather than cloud gaming, and Newell explained that he was a long-standing skeptic of cloud gaming. As he saw it, the cloud incurred a huge network cost that could collapse the system upon its own success, and it put latency compensation in the wrong place, at the center of the network rather than the edge."One thing we believe is latency sensitivity is going to increase in the future," Newell said. "The ability to do local, high-speed processing will become more important than it is right now."
Up close with Valve's Steam Box prototypes
Engadget had a photo shoot with Valve's lineup of Steam Box and living room PC prototypes today at CES. A few of the designs were straight out of Valve's hivemind, while a few existing products, such as the Alienware X51 and Bolt from Digital Storm were examples of the "Steam in your living room" initiative. Valve's display was meant to demonstrate a variety of form factors for living room-friendly designs, hardware engineer Jeff Keyzer said.Check out the complete gallery over on Engadget, especially that one design that looks like the baby of an original Xbox and a Gamecube. Keep in mind that all of the controllers are stand-in Logitechs, not prototypes.
Newell: Valve's own 'Steam Box' will use Linux
Valve is in attendance at this year's CES festivities in Las Vegas, and while its primary mission is to meet with hardware partners like Xi3, founder Gabe Newell is still able to find the time to leak details about Valve's own illusive, as-of-yet still unannounced gaming hardware solution.First and foremost is the fact that Valve's Steam Box will run Linux, regardless of what the company's various hardware partners install on their own machines. "We'll come out with our own and we'll sell it to consumers by ourselves. That'll be a Linux box," Newell told The Verge. "If you want to install Windows you can. We're not going to make it hard. This is not some locked box by any stretch of the imagination."Newell also revealed that Valve's Steam Box will be a networked gaming solution for an entire home, not just the living room. "The Steam Box will also be a server," Newell said. "Any PC can serve multiple monitors, so over time, the next-generation (post-Kepler) you can have one GPU that's serving up eight simulateneous [sic] game calls. So you could have one PC and eight televisions and eight controllers and everybody getting great performance out of it. We're used to having one monitor, or two monitors – now we're saying lets expand that a little bit."This all sounds very exciting, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. As we learned from Valve electrical engineer Ben Krasnow earlier today, Valve has "no current plans to announce anything in 2013."
Valve engineer: No plans to announce 'Steam Box' in 2013
Ben Krasnow, Valve electrical engineer and mad genius, has told Engadget that Valve will not be announcing plans for a consumer-friendly "Steam Box" PC this year. The news comes after German site Golem.de reported that Klasnow himself claimed Valve would make such an announcement. The alleged comments would have been made during a talk at the EHSM conference in Berlin last month, which Klasnow attended."With regards to the Steam Box news – there has been a lot of things stated in the media which I didn't say," Krasnow tells Engadget, "For example, it's true that we are working on getting Steam into the living room, and are planning for a hardware box, but we have no current plans to announce anything in 2013." Yesterday's report also stated that the device would run on Linux, though Krasnow says may or may not happen in the end. Still, even if Valve's official Steam Box won't be revealed this year, he says the company has many other hardware projects in the works that likely will be.Valve itself, meanwhile, tells Engadget that "Many PCs optimized for Steam and Big Picture will be shipping later this year," and that the company will brings some of these to its CES meetings, along with its own in-house prototypes. Indeed, smaller PCs designed for Steam and Big Picture mode are already being announced, specifically Xi3's diminutive "Piston" models revealed earlier this week. As if to drive the point home, Xi3's new PC was partially funded by Valve and will be featured in the company's booth at CES.
Xi3 reveals tiny Steam-focused PC, Valve investment [update]
The "Steam Box" is coming, though it's not officially called that. PC company Xi3 has announced a "new development stage computer system," to be shown at CES this week. It's designed specifically to support Steam and by extension its Big Picture mode, and will be housed in a chassis similar to the one shown above. Valve has invested in the company, and the computer will be on display at both Valve's and Xi3's booths at CES."This new development stage product will allow users to take full-advantage of their large high-definition TV displays for an amazing computer game experience," said Xi3 CEO Jason A. Sullivan in a statement printed on Polygon. "As a result, this new system could provide access to thousands of gaming titles through an integrated system that exceeds the capabilities of leading game consoles, but can fit in the palm of your hand."Update: Can it actually fit in the palm of your hand? Engadget goes hands-on at CES.Update 2: Xi3 tried to Kickstart two new modular computers late last year. However, the project failed to achieve funding on October 28, falling just under $160,000 short of its $250,000 goal. Xi3 refers to one of the computers, the X7A Modular Computer, as a "power user and gaming level machine." Xi3 goes on to detail its specifications: As we envision our new X7A Modular Computer, we see it powered by a new Quad-Core 64-bit, x86-based processor running at up to 3.2GHz, integrated with up to 384 graphics shader cores, and 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and able to handle graphics-rich computer games like Crysis 2 with ease. The X7A Modular Computer will also run 3 high-definition monitors simultaneously, has four USB 3.0/2.0 ports, four eSATAp ports, four USB 2.0 ports, a 10/100/1000 Ethernet port, and up to 1TB of super fast solid-state storage inside the chassis, making it perfect for gamers and power users alike. And yet the X7A Modular Computer will be housed in a chassis about the size of a softball (4.27x3.65x3.65-inches) and run on a mere 40Watts of electricity or less. We expect the X7A Modular Computer to begin shipping in early 2013 with a price starting at under $1,000. All within a chassis you can hold in the palm of your hand!Xi3 confirmed to Polygon that the system being shown at CES is based on the X7A Modular Computer, but declined to elaborate on any differences between the two.
Rumor: Valve to unveil Steam Box this year, will use Linux
Valve's rumored "Steam Box," a compact PC designed to easily connect to televisions and leverage Steam's Big Picture Mode, will debut this year according to a report from German site Golem.de. Furthermore, the Steam Box will supposedly run on Linux. That wouldn't be too surprising given Valve head Gabe Newell's distaste for Windows 8 and the company's recent Linux push. The 2013 release also gels with Newell's recent comments predicting a spate of TV- and Steam-friendly hardware launching in 2013 from various companies, including Valve.The news was supposedly confirmed by Valve electrical engineer Ben Krasnow during the EHSM conference in Berlin last month. Krasnow, incidentally, was there to show off his homemade X-ray scanner. Given that his personal projects also include, among other things, a DIY rocket engine, we'd say he's probably qualified to help build a little computer.Valve has plenty of opportunities to announce the hardware this year, including GDC in March, E3 in June, Gamescom in August, or even CES, which takes place this week. For what it's worth, Valve chose to announce Big Picture Mode at GDC 2011. Of course, given this is Valve we're talking about, the company could just hold an event of its own.
Linux system requirements pop up on some Steam games
Valve provided the Linux system requirements for a handful of games on Steam over the past week, perhaps gearing up for a full, public launch of Steam Linux. Steam added more than 30 games that run on Linux, spanning standard releases and a few Greenlight games, and Steam Linux is currently in closed beta.We attempted to find the Linux system requirements on a PC and via a virtual box running the latest version of Ubuntu, but to no avail. A few faster people snapped screenshots of the specs, such as the above image of Serious Sam 3: BFE's Linux requirements taken by Techgage.Yesterday's discussion of a Steam Box, direct from the mouth of Valve founder Gabe Newell, raised questions of Linux as a potentially pivotal player in Valve's arsenal. That thing will have to have an OS, after all, and Linux would be a natural option. As we discussed on the Super Joystiq Podcast last week, Big Picture mode plus Linux might equal a big ol' Steam Box.
Valve's Gabe Newell talks 'turnkey' living room hardware
With the recent launch of Steam Big Picture, it hasn't taken long for the words "Steam Box" to enter the collective gaming community's brain space. Valve boss Gabe Newell reignited that discussion when speaking on the red carpet at last night's Video Game Awards ceremony about the company's plans to enter the hardware business.Newell told Kotaku that he sees multiple companies entering the hardware space, and that "most customers and most developers are gonna find that [the PC is] a better environment for them." His reasoning is that consumers "won't have to split the world into thinking about 'why are my friends in the living room, why are my video sources in the living room different from everyone else?' So in a sense we hopefully are gonna unify those environments."The Valve boss suggested that companies would launch PC bundles in 2013 designed to run Steam in the living room and compete with next gen consoles. Newell added that Valve is one of those companies, and its efforts may not be as open-source as some might expect:"Well certainly our hardware will be a very controlled environment. If you want more flexibility, you can always buy a more general purpose PC. For people who want a more turnkey solution, that's what some people are really gonna want for their living room. The nice thing about a PC is a lot of different people can try out different solutions, and customers can find the ones that work best for them."
Valve 'jumping in' to hardware market
Valve currently has a job posting for an industrial engineer and, avoiding any definitive statements on what it means, declares it is getting into the hardware business. "OMG, STEAM BOX!!!!11!one!" may be your first conclusion, but let's take a breather."We're frustrated by the lack of innovation in the computer hardware space though, so we're jumping in," the job listing for the "Industrial Designer" notes on the company's site. "Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven't really changed in any meaningful way over the years. There's a real void in the marketplace, and opportunities to create compelling user experiences are being overlooked."So, while the end results could be something simple, the idea of Valve creating the "Steam Box," a piece of hardware that combines the best elements of consoles and PC with full access to the Steam digital distribution library, is the Holy Grail. The rumors remain compelling, even as Valve half-denies it, while skunkworks hardware initiatives keep popping up.
Valve employee spills the hardware beans: wearable computers, ahoy
When Michael Abrash started working for Valve, he expected the higher-ups to hand him a pile of work and tell him to hop to it. They didn't. Instead, he was told to figure out the most valuable thing he could do for the company, and then do it. So, Abrash wound up kicking off an in-house R&D project for wearable computers, and according to a recent blog post, is looking to expand his research team. More than me-too mice and gamepads, indeed. Abrash is quick to put a lid on rumors of "Steam glasses," however, and warns readers not to expect any big reveals at E3 -- this is just an "initial investigation into a very interesting and promising space," he says, and is more "research than development." Rearing to give Google's Project Glass a run for its money? Or maybe you're just itching for a detailed narrative of employee and employer? Either way, you'll find what you're looking at the source link below.
Valve job listing points to hardware plans for 'whole new gaming experiences'
Yes, there are employees at Valve right now who are working on some form of gaming hardware. What that gaming hardware is, however, remains to be seen. A job listing discovered by Engadget this week offers more clues as to what that hardware could be, specifically pointing to job skills like "hardware design, prototyping, testing, and production across a wide range of platforms."Getting more direct, the "electronics engineer" position entails working "with the hardware team to conceive, design, evaluate, and produce new types of input, output, and platform hardware." Wait, platform hardware? That sounds an awful lot like the Steam Box rumors we heard earlier this year (rumors that were later semi-shut down).But don't get your hopes up just yet – just because Valve is experimenting with different types of hardware doesn't mean that it's looking to produce a piece of consumer hardware any time soon. We've reached out to Valve for further clarity, but aren't expecting much beyond silence.
Valve job posting reveals plans for homegrown hardware, promises it won't suck
Rumors fluttering about Valve's entry into the hardware market just got a little less salty. According to the outfit's own jobs page, it's prepping to offer consumers "whole new gaming experiences." A call for an experienced electronics engineer says it all, "For years Valve has been all about writing software that provides great gameplay experiences. Now we're developing hardware to enhance those experiences." The ideal candidate ought to have a hefty load of prototyping experience, a knack for working with embedded systems and microcontrollers, a proficiency in thermal management, high speed serial interfaces, ARM / x86 system design, and more. We're not about to hazard a guess at what this adds up to, but Valve promises it's more compelling than "me-too mice and gamepads." Hit the source link below to apply, get hired, and let us know what's up.[Thanks, Alexis]
Valve debunks rumors of 'Steam Box' console PC
Valve has quashed rumors that it is developing a console-like "Steam Box" hardware standard for its Steam service. Valve's Doug Lombardi told Kotaku that the company is "building boxes" to test its "Big Picture" initiative, which will make Steam play nice with PC setups that use a television set as a display. Lombardi also noted that Valve is experimenting with things like biometric feedback, which was another aspect of the console rumor, but that such experimentation is "a long way from Valve shipping any sort of hardware."That said, Lombardi did not dismiss the possibility of Valve-developed hardware in the future.
Rumor: Valve working on 'Steam Box' console standard with customizable controller, biometrics
Valve has already revolutionized PC gaming distribution with its industry-leading Steam platform, and now it has its sights set on bringing that same level of innovation to your living room, according to a report from The Verge.Valve is said to be working on hardware and software specifications for a "Steam Box;" which will actually be a unified console standard available to interested hardware manufacturers, rather than a specific console produced by Valve itself. Similar arrangements have been tried previously in the home console market, most notably the Philips CD-i and 3DO Interactive Multiplayer standards. Should rumors be believed, the Alienware X51 has already been developed to Steam Box standards and will be retroactively infused with Valve's software once it becomes available. The hardware backbone is currently said to be an Intel Core i7 with eight gigs of RAM and an Nvidia GPU. Devices built on the standard will reportedly run any PC title, and will also support other digital distribution platforms like EA's Origin service.A patent for a controller with interchangeable parts, filed by Valve, has also been discovered by The Verge. Diagrams show functionality strongly reminiscent of the MLG Pro controller by Mad Catz, as well a use case depicting interaction with a local gaming device and a networked "gaming server device." The rabbit hole goes much deeper, however, as "sources" claim that mood-tracking biometric systems will be implemented into the system, either in the form of bracelets or directly into Steam Box controllers. This would allow a game to measure the player's pulse rate and galvanic skin response, the gameplay/design implications of which are numerous.Should all this prove accurate, Valve's official announcement will happen sometime between GDC and E3, and will cause the fabric of reality to fold in on itself.
