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Gabe Newell Hints at Steam Box Reveal Next Week

by on September 17, 2013
 

Valve head honcho Gabe Newell has hinted that we may see a reveal of the much-rumored Steam Box as early as next week. Speaking at LinuxCon, and reported by ARS Technica, Newell delivered a speech which as well as championing the open source OS contained a number of interesting statements.

“None of the propriety closed platforms are going to be able to provide that grand unification between mobile, the living room, and the desktop. Next week we’re going to be rolling out more information about how we get there and what are the hardware opportunities that we see for bringing Linux into the living room and potentially pointing further down the road to how we can get it even more unified with mobile.”

Now I don’t know about you, but to me (and Kotaku) that certainly sounds like Valve will be showing off a Linux based computer that will be available to consumers and will presumably be able to run Steam.

Valve is yet to officially confirm they are working on a Steam Box, but the hardware has been rumored and mentioned by many Valve employees over the last couple of years, including Mr Newell himself.

Also in his speech Newell once again criticized the current PC market.

“I think we’ll see either significant restructuring or market exits by top five PC players. It’s looking pretty grim,”

“Systems which are innovation-friendly and embrace openness are going to have a greater competitive advantage to closed or tightly regulated systems.”

Valve has not yet confirmed any press conference or an announcement of any kind for next week, but if or should I say when they do we will be sure to update you.