Steambox Officially Real, Dubbed ‘Steam Machines’ Coming Early 2014

Valve had three big announcements planned for this week, the first of which we got Monday concerning the SteamOS, and today we’ve recieved the second announcement that many have speculated about for years: Prebuilt Steam PC’s (aka Steambox/Gabecube).

Valve has announced that they’ll be partnering with numerous companies to release a number of different PC’s running SteamOS that are designed specifically for pure living room gaming. While the systems themselves will not be available for retail until sometime in early 2014, Valve has stated that they have a prototype model that will be available to 300 lucky participants this year, which any Steam member can apply for provided they have at least 10 friends on Steam, a community profile, and have logged at least some time playing a game in big picture mode with a gamepad.

30 participants are apparently already planned and picked for based on past participation in other Beta programs, while the other 270 will be drawn from the pool of applicants which will be locked in on Oct 25th, giving people a solid month to apply and meet the prerequisites. Not much more information has been given just yet, but Valve’s teasing about more info becoming available soon, with only one more big announcement left for the end of this week. With the first two announcements being an OS and Hardware, we can only dream of what a possible third could be, perhaps software in the form of a CERTAIN LONG AWAITED THIRD ENTREE IN A MAJOR VALVE FRANCHISE (there’s only about 5 different franchises to choose from).

Source: Tech Spot