Valve has now officially quashed rumours that it will be making its own set-top box to compete with the likes of Playstation and Xbox. Valve Marketing Director Doug Lombardi has said that while they are working on an interface update to Steam, the notion of it getting its own console would not be happening any time soon. Speculation about the console started swelling after there was talk of biometric interfaces and a prototype box built by Valve’s Greg Coomer. Lombardi had this to say about the issue
“Greg’s one of the guys leading the effort of the Big Picture mode,” Lombardi said. “The idea is that you can take Steam to any display. What we’re trying to do is say, ‘here’s a box that we’re going to use for testing that’s common for Big Picture mode and get performance at a base level.’… We’re always putting boxes together. Going all the way back to the Half-Life 1 days, we built special boxes to test our software render… it’s just part of development.”
So there you have it. The rumours were kind of sketchy to begin with. You can’t release a console system these days without amassing huge amounts of resources. The main three competitors in the console game are losing money on every unit just so they can secure a proper set of exclusive games. If anyone is going to release a console in this climate, it definitely will not be through the traditional channels of suppliers and retailers. Perhaps we might still see a PC build with a Steam “Seal of Approval”.
Source:Kotaku.
Follow Us!