Following the SteamOS announcement game developer turned online game merchant Valve unveils the extent of its hardware making ambitions-- it will also start selling SteamOS PCs complete with an own-brand gamepad, the Steam Controller.
As the company puts it, "we are working with multiple partners to bring a variety of Steam gaming machines to market during 2014, all of them running SteamOS." Such machines are still a work in progress, and thus the company will first run a very limited beta program by shipping "high-performance prototype[s]" free of charge to all of 300 Steam users.
No further details are available on the Steam Box(es), other than that the prototypes feature "an array of specifications, price, and performance" and are freely hackable by users. One will even be able to replace SteamOS with a different operating system, although Valve boss Gabe Newell would surely frown at the idea of his company's hardware running on the "giant sadness" that's Windows 8...
The second Valve announcement is an unusual-looking gamepad-- the Steam Controller, a so-described "new kind of input technology" designed to "bridge the gap from the desk to the living room."
Instead of the traditional analogue stick and button combinations, the Steam Controller features a pair of circular, "high resolution" clickable trackpads, 4 face buttons, 2 more buttons on the back, 4 triggers and, right in the middle, a touchscreen. "Dual linear resonant actuators" (aka weighted electro-magnets) provide haptic feedback, including vibrations of such high bandwidth Valve claims the trackpads can even function as speakers.
Valve promises "Whole genres of games" will be playable from the sofa with the Steam Controller, including first person shooters and simulators such as the mighty Euro Truck Simulator 2.
The Steam Controller will make part of the beta program (if as a prototype lacking a touchscreen), and developers are to get an API once units start shipping to lucky participants.
Will Valve do like it did to PC game retailers to the world of gaming PC vendors? We will learn more once actual devices start hitting the market sometime during 2014.
