Gabe Newell has confirmed that Valve is indeed working on the Steam Box and it will be running Linux. He has also revealed that the Steam Box will be able to run Windows if you want to install it and they won’t be locking down the system.
They want to make PC gaming on TV seamless and are in collaboration with third parties like we covered here, to develop a great box that will not only be accessible to plenty of people but will also be powerful.
“We’ll come out with our own and we’ll sell it to consumers by ourselves. That’ll be a Linux box, [and] if you want to install Windows you can. We’re not going to make it hard. This is not some locked box by any stretch of the imagination,” he said.
He also talked about controller precision and Biometrics.
“We also think that a controller that has higher precision and lower latency is another interesting thing to have,” Newell said.
“Biometrics on the other hand is essentially adding more communication bandwidth between the game and the person playing it,” he said, “especially in ways the player isn’t necessarily conscious of. Biometrics gives us more visibility. Also, gaze tracking. We think gaze tracking is gonna turn out to be super important.”
The Steam Box doesn’t have a release date but The Verge has a bunch of pictures in their interview so go check it out.
