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SteamMachines

Steam Machines

 

To build on the momentum of their first announcement, Valve has officially announced its Steam Machines (or Steam Box but there is no official name yet). As expected, these machines will be running Valve’s new Steam OS and will not only be optimized for Steam OS but for gaming of course. Even though an official announcement has been made, there are no specific manufacturers that have been named and there will only be an initial beta period for the remainder of this year. But that’s actually great news because there will be 300 Steam Machines that will be available for beta use by, yep you guessed it, gamers in the Steam community (so hopefully me). Valve has designed a “high-performance prototype” that will be used for this beta test and there are clear steps laid out for anyone who wants to be a beta tester but they have to be completed before October 25th:

  1. Join the Steam Universe community group
  2. Agree to the Steam Hardware Beta Terms and Conditions
  3. Have at least 10 Steam friends
  4. Have a public Steam Community profile
  5. Play a game using a gamepad in Big Picture mode

These steps can be completed in any order and you might have already completed some of these steps during your regular use of Steam. Out of the 300 Steam Machines that will be available for beta testing only 270 of them will be awarded randomly. Make sure you sign up if you’re interested, I know I definitely will.

There will be one more announcement from Valve tomorrow and from all indications it appears to be about gaming titles. That would make perfect sense and seems to be an obvious choice because consumers/gamers need incentive to want to get a Steam Machine and a great way to give that in addition to what has already been announced is through the announcement of great titles and exclusive titles. Maybe the long-awaited Half-Life 3 will be announced? Either way, I’ll be tuned into the announcement

2 comments

  1. Allahweh - October 14, 2013 6:38 PM

    Hmmmmm, I haven’t used Big Picture mode just yet. I guess I would need to do that to be considered for the hardware beta? How does Big Picture currently work – do you just let it out to your TV and then use a wireless controller that would still be linked to your PC or something like that?

    Reply
    • Kareem Ali - October 14, 2013 8:13 PM

      You can select it in the top right corner of the Steam application to switch to big picture mode. You can then use any joystick currently connected to your computer to navigate the menu, etc. So you can either connect your computer directly to your TV, stream to your TV or just use it with your current HD monitor. And yes you would have to do that to be considered for the beta

      Reply

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