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Guess what?

They're true.

MFW:

I’m always derisive about these kinds of things, but we’ll see where things go. I don’t really expect to be disappointed.

Yes!
YES!
We can expect these PC's coming at reasonable prices, right?

So it begins…
Fuck you EA, and you Nintendo..and You Sony
The new era of the Steam Box shall begin…
…And we will be still waiting for Half Life 2 episode 3
..At last TF2 will have new hats that I will probably never get…

Video related:

I can't wait to see how does this turn out.

It remains to b seen if Steam Box solves the problems of PCs…that being compatibility issues, drivers, upgrades…etc.

Things like that. I wouldn't be too hasty in writing off consoles just yet.

>Steam Linux out of beta
>MFW

Well a PC specifically designed for living rooms. Sounds like good promise of the taboo "______ 3" from Valve. Plus, even if you don't get one, this is a good thing. It'll probably help end the Console vs. PC shit.

Hmm… We already have the next gen Nintendo console. The new Xbox and the PS4 are basically sure-fire to be at the next E3, and now Valve's working on a PC-console hybrid. Next gaming gen is officially upon us.

Oh yeah, and whatever happened with that OUYA thing everyone was talking about a few months ago?

>no release date mentioned
>Valve

I look forward to seeing this new console sometime in the next 2 decades.

So it's a computer, that is connected to a monitor that is not mobile, that plays video games, that uses a controller, with non upgradeable hardware.

…big fucking deal? This doesn't sound like a good thing to me. It's a PC with all the hardware restrictions of a console. If you expect every Steam game to work perfectly fine on it out of the box, you're out of your mind.

butts is from valve, screemng an thighs mae me poplr

Great for a person like me who cant afford a decent compt to run most steam games, that is if this console is going to be reasonably priced

UPDATE:

Evidently, a prototype has been announced and its specs detailed

Pic unrelated.

It appears that the range of the prices may be $500-$1000.

I'll be over here playing my kiddy DS, 3DS, and Wii games.

I don't think we can fairly make an estimate of the Piston's retail price off of the prices of the X7A and X5A.

For one, the article said "Xi3 wouldn't discuss price for Piston" and that Xi3 never really specified in what ways the Piston would be different from the X7A.

The addition of the X5A's price really didn't make sense. Did Xi3 say something about the X5A's price being similar to Piston's? What was the context for inclusion of the X5A rather than any other product that Xi3 has made?

Perhaps, due to financial and/or manufacture deals and agreement, parts for the Piston may have similar capabilities to the X7A but come at half the cost because the component manufacturer can only sell these parts to Valve and Xi3 for the benefit of a large and constant customer?

Just some thoughts here.

EDIT: Talked to a guy with a Master's in Business, and provided the projected sale of the Piston is in large amounts, my ending paragraph makes sense.

That's fair. It's my assumption that the figures presented in the article are near the retail price upon launch. If not, then the fact Valve wouldn't give an estimated price might indicate that it's higher. If it were lower, then I'd think the Valve representative would have jumped at the chance to say "the price of the console is likely to be lower than the X5A!" But that's pure speculation. I've never followed the launch of any console very closely.

I'd imagine you can give an estimate of a price in such a setting and then change the retail price as long as you're still close to the launch retail price (~$50-$100). I don't think their hesitance was due to them wanting to be accurate.
 
As for me, I've never been a PC gamer anyway, so a Valve console means next to nothing to me. I don't really know much about it. But I find it interesting that there will be another console available.

Video game journalism is a joke.

>Implying this isn't anything but a glorified PC

>Implying that's not a bad thing.

Forgive me, I didn't mean to imply it wasn't a bad thing. I think it's a very bad thing.

Oh, Valve's making a console? Cool. Does the name "Phantom" sound familiar?

The Steam box, a failure? This thing has not even left the prototype stage and it already has beaten the next generation Xbox specs wise. Not only that, the Steam Box project is a multi-tier program, and this is just the first phase of the project. The Xi13 Piston is only a concept of the steam box; it is not the final product, nor is it the only prototype. Valve might allow multiple companies to create different versions of the Steam Box to create competition in the market. Valve does not care about the hardware that these companies release, along as the hardware is up-gradable and is up to standard with Valve which can allow them to play games like Crisis 2 with a PC experience. Valve wants to get Steam onto the casual players TV and they might achieve this, and if they continue to support the steam sales on this system, it will be a greater incentive for more gamers to transfer over to the Steam Box. Essential what Valve is creating is an arms race among companies to create the most viable and accessible "console” to modern gamers and then standardize the system once the most efficient unit is achieved which can be upgraded so it can keep up with newer games graphics if the gamer decides to do so, which will allow the Steam Box to become superior to the PS4 and the Xbox 720 as their hardware ages. The Xi13 seems to be the benchmark for the standard of this machine and as the process of creating these machines are refined the Steam Box's price might drop down to $600-$700 which is very reasonable for the release of a new generation console, Valve could also subsidies the machine by $50-$100 to make the machine even more reasonably priced wise to lure new users.

Some details from this interview with Gabe Newell himself:

- The key to the whole project is to provide a console that is more open, encouraging developers to get involved and Valve will encourage them to get the best value from the hardware.
Valve is working on form factor and building something “thing that’s quiet and focuses on high performance”.

- Valve’s version of Steam Box will be Linux based, but “if you want to install Windows you can.”
Their controller tech is more being built around biometrics and decreasing latency and not on motion controls.

- Steam Box will feature a full web browser, which can run streaming services like “Netflix”.

- Steam Box can also function like a server and as GPUs increase in power, it might be able to serve multiple monitors. Like say as many as eight, each with controller support.

- There are two models in development at Valve codenamed; Bigfoot and Littlefoot. Bigfoot is the Steam Box proper, while Littlefoot addresses what Valve needs “to extend this to the mobile space”. Littlefoot might also have a touchpad, but Valve is still “trying to figure out where that’s useful”.

- It seems they are focusing on bridging the gap between PC and console gaming.

It also came with these image:

Gaben ended the interview with this little quotable gem:
"The internet is super smart. If you do something that is cool, that's actually worth people's time, then they'll adopt it. If you do something that's not cool and sucks, you can spend as many marketing dollars as you want, [they] just won't."

I'll say this. The actual product doesn't need to be that amazing. It doesn't need to be expensive. It just needs to do as advertised and possibly better (being modest). The key is architecture and infrastructure. Keeping costs low, keeping gaming quality high as well as having a good support base. They can do just like Amazon has done with the Kindle, break even or be losing money on the hardware, make up for it with a crazy platform that you can sell all your stuff on and is already proven to work and sell well. You don't have to make money on everything, and these companies are ahead of the curve in that respect. Now if only other companies would follow suit…