Valve co-founder Gabe Newell has confirmed that the company’s upcoming Linux-based hardware is still in the works, and let everyone know that new information is coming next week.
Taking center stage at the recently held LinuxCon in New Orleans (see video below), Newell stated that Valve, in the following week, will discuss as to how the company intends to carryover Linux – an open source platform – into fans’ living room with its own hardware.
At the presentation, Newell also went on to describe Linux as "the future of gaming,” as if relating to what Valve had become convinced of a number of years ago.
"Yes, in fact, you can take everything that you liked about your PC and get it to work in your living room – that's called Big Picture. Our next step, having done these other pieces, is now on the hardware side.
“There are sets of issues to making sure whatever platform you have works well in a living room environment," Newell stated. "There are thermal issues and sound issues, but there also a bunch of input issues. So the next step in our contribution to this [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," he added. "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 already released a Linux client for Steam in February this year, and now with Steam's ambition to step further into the fans’ living room with big ideas in mind, Newell rightfully confirmed that company’s next step, indeed, is to offer things more from the hardware side.
As Eurogamer states, “Valve has been working for some time now on what has been dubbed the Steam Box, but the Seattle-based company has been quiet on it since March 2013.”
“Then, Newell told the BBC that Valve was working with partners to ‘nail down how fast we can make it,’ with a prototype expected by July.”
Check out the entire video below.
