Valve’s director of marketing, Doug Lombardi, sets the record straight on ‘Steam Box’.
If you’ve been anywhere near the internet this week you would have witnessed a deluge of stories involving Valve and a future console project affectionately dubbed ‘Steam Box’.
Well, according to Valve’s marketing guru, Doug Lombardi, the makers of Half Life, Portal and Team Fortress are indeed figuring out new ways for Steam users to interact with games on their TVs, but it isn’t anything to do with a new piece of hardware.
Valve technician Greg Coomer tweeted this pic which fuelled speculation surrounding the development of 'Steam Box.
“We’re prepping the Steam Big Picture Mode UI and getting ready to ship that, so we’re building boxes to test that on,” Mr Lombardi explained to Kotaku at GDC.
“We’re also doing a bunch of different experiments with biometric feedback and stuff like that, which we’ve talked about a fair amount
“All of that is stuff that we’re working on, but it’s a long way from Valve shipping any sort of hardware.”
Anyone who has ever connected their PC to their TV will tell you that Steam’s interface isn’t conducive to use more than a foot away from the screen, so news of this “Big Picture Mode UI” is certainly welcome.
So there you have it folks, Valve is working on some kind of hardware, but it won’t be ready for public consumption any time soon, and it’s just as likely to be some kind of biometric peripheral than a standalone console unit.
Company of Heroes 2, Batman: Arkham Origins, Grand Theft Auto V, Watch_Dogs, Beyond: Two Souls and Night of the Rabbit previews.
Download Now!
