Remember the rumor mill surrounding the Steambox last year? Valve’s living room PC gaming/console gaming hybrid solution, that would use Linux, and offer users the best of both worlds, all for a nice, affordable price? Remember how it was going to upset the console market? Remember how all of that talk came to nothing, and all we got was some bullshit hinting at a Steambox ‘standard’ earlier this year?

Well looks like the actual Valve made Steambox is still a thing, reports Eurogamer.Speaking at LinuxCon, Valve head honcho Gabe Newell confirmed that the Steambox exists, and he plans to shed more light on it some time next week.

“There are sets of issues to making sure whatever platform you have works well in a living room environment,” he said. “There are thermal issues and sound issues, but there also a bunch of input issues. So the next step in our contribution to the promotion of Linux for gaming is to release some work we’ve done on the hardware side.

“None of the proprietary closed platforms are going to be able to provide that grand unification between mobile, the living room and the desktop.

“Next week we’re going to be rolling out more information about how we get there and what are the hardware opportunities we see for bringing Linux into the living room, and potentially pointing further down the road to how we can get it even more unified in mobile.”

Valve has already made inroads into both, living room gaming, and Linux gaming, with its Steam Big Picture Mode and Linux Steam client respectively. Unifying all of this with hardware would make Valve a real player in the world of gaming hardware, and might legitimately see the entry of a fourth contender in the gaming hardware market since the exit of Sega and entry of Microsoft back in 2001.

Ahead of the BAFTA awards, in an interview with BBC Gabe Newell confirmed that prototypes of their upcoming Steam Box will start getting circulated to testers in the next three to four months. He also mentioned that the team is striving to deliver a powerful console while still keeping noise and heat at bay.

“We’re working with partners trying to nail down how fast we can make it. We’ll be giving out some prototypes to customers to gauge their reactions, I guess, in the next three to four months,” he said.

“There are noise issues and heat issues and being able to [deal with] that while still offering a powerful enough gaming experience is the challenge in building it.”

Gabe also hinted at the possibility of biometric sensors or something of the like to further enhance the game experience and immersion.

“If you think of a game like Left For Dead – which was trying to put you into a sort of horror movie – if you don’t change the experience of what the player is actually feeling then it stops being a horror game,” he said.“So you need to actually be able to directly measure how aroused the player is – what their heart rate is, things like that – in order to offer them a new experience each time they play.”

The Steam Box is still shrouded in mystery, and knowing Valve we probably won’t hear much about it till it’s nearing the final stages of development.

“As an Industrial Designer at Valve, you will join a world-class group of electrical, mechanical, software engineers and designers who are busily defining new entertainment experiences through both hardware and software. We’re hoping to add your expertise in product design and manufacturing, ergonomics, usability, aesthetics, and surfacing to our team.

Valve is an entertainment and technology company driven to design and deliver rewarding experiences to customers. We hire generalists who also exhibit deep expertise. Designers at Valve contribute in a wide variety of ways: We define and articulate goals, we design and ship products, we create and implement user studies, we write press releases and blog posts, we manage projects, and much more. We also recruit designers. People like you.
Valve is traditionally a software company.

Open platforms like the PC and Mac are important to us, as they enable us and our partners to have a robust and direct relationship with customers. We’re frustrated by the lack of innovation in the computer hardware space though, so we’re jumping in. Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven’t really changed in any meaningful way over the years. There’s a real void in the marketplace, and opportunities to create compelling user experiences are being overlooked.

At Valve, our design process really gets going once products are in customers’ hands. Our best work is the result of an ongoing dialog with customers. Through years of shipping software as a service through Steam, our digital distribution platform, this has become fundamental to the way we create great products. With an engaged community of millions of users, what will you ship? What will you try, and what will you learn through doing so?
Do you prefer to define the work that you pursue, rather than simply following a vision that’s been set for you? If you’re seeking an opportunity to steer product definition, functional exploration and design decision-making, consider joining Valve. We can’t wait to see where you’ll take us.

Requirements:
BS/BA/BFA degree (or equivalent) in industrial design (or equivalent)
6+ years of professional experience shipping world-class, high-tech hardware products
A thorough understanding of product design principles
Highly effective multidisciplinary collaboration skills
Personal commitment to quality, attention to detail
Confidence with 2D and 3D design visualization tools
Effective, articulate design communication and decision-making skills
Please include with your application an online portfolio of work which conveys your capabilities.”

There were rumors of Valve’s SteamBox a few months ago, but Valve Marketing Director Doug Lombardi has stated that Valve is a long way from shipping out any sort of hardware. However, it does looks like now that they are jumping into hardware development.  This is going to be very interesting, hopefully Valve can do something that no one has done before.

Keep checking back as the months go by for more information regarding Valve’s upcoming hardware development.

Source – Valve