The Verge - Valve's Steam Box: Gabe Newell's quest to reinvent PC gaming

Xi3 opens $999.99 pre-orders for Piston gaming 'console PC' (update 2)

2013-03-11T17:23:02Z

Xi3, one of several companies approached by Valve to work on a "Steam Box" console — though Valve now disavows involvement — has opened pre-orders for its gaming-optimized PC. The Piston, which was first shown off at CES in January, uses a small enclosure like that of Xi3's other modular computers. The $999.99 price tag gets you a 128GB SSD, a 3.2GHz quad-core AMD R464 processor with integrated graphics, and 8GB of RAM, with more details forthcoming; we've previously heard that it will be optimized to work with Steam and Big Picture Mode. Pre-order customers can upgrade the size of the SSD to 256GB or 512GB, but the latter almost doubles the price of the machine, adding $750. Further details will be forthcoming as the Piston nears...

Valve will hand out Steam Box prototypes 'in the next three to four months'

2013-03-05T21:53:02Z

Valve's Gabe Newell said his company wasn't canceling any projects after a recent spate of layoffs, and it certainly sounds like the company's Steam Box initiative is still on track. The co-founder told the BBC that his company plans to hand out prototype units of the TV-friendly gaming PC to "customers" in the next three to four months, in order to "gauge their reactions." While he didn't make it clear whether those "customers" are the companies who would be building the Steam Box, or actual consumers who might buy a Steam Box for themselves, he did suggest that there are still a number of issues to work out before we see a Steam-based game console on shelves.

"There are noise issues and heat issues and being able to [deal with] that...

Valve's Gabe Newell addresses layoffs: 'We aren't canceling any projects'

2013-02-14T00:42:19Z

It's an unusual day at Valve Software, with reports of layoffs at the game company, and Valve co-founder Gabe Newell is taking the unusual step of commenting on the matter publicly. In a statement to Engadget, he told the world that despite "an unusual amount of speculation" into the company's staffing situation, none of Valve's current projects will be canceled:

"We don't usually talk about personnel matters for a number of reasons. There seems to be an unusual amount of speculation about some recent changes here, so I thought I'd take the unusual step of addressing them. No, we aren't canceling any projects. No, we aren't changing any priorities or projects we've been discussing. No, this isn't about Steam or Linux or hardware or...

Valve reportedly fires more employees as part of 'great cleansing'

2013-02-13T20:43:15Z

Following news last night that Valve fired engineer Jeri Ellsworth, it appears that Valve may be undergoing a more extensive staff cut in its Android and hardware development departments. Gamasutra says it has confirmed that several employees were let go from the company behind Half-Life, Portal, and Steam, and that up to 25 employees may have been cut — Valve employees described the changes as a "great cleansing" and that Valve is dealing with "large decisions."

The cuts include at least one key staff member

Valve appears to have indirectly confirmed today's departures; its staff directory shows eight fewer employees than were listed in a snapshot of the page a month earlier. The list includes several game artists, and the cuts...

Valve fires Jeri Ellsworth, who was developing Steam Box game controllers

2013-02-13T05:45:57Z

When Valve first started publicly hiring hardware engineers for secret R&D projects, Jeri Ellsworth was already there: the talented maker and Commodore 64 aficionado had been snapped up to help jumpstart Valve's hardware division. There, she helped carve out a prototype lab with 3-D printers, laser cutters, and other prototyping tools, and began work on a series of original game controller prototypes to accompany Valve's Steam Box efforts — ways to use a PC game console effectively from the couch. Now, though, it seems she's out of a job: Jeri Ellsworth tweeted that she got fired today, and is already thinking about her next projects.

How Valve's Steam Box will reinvent the game console as you know it

2013-02-06T19:00:04Z

Valve's Steam Box is coming, and if the company behind Half-Life, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 gets it right, the next gaming console in your living room could be much different — and more compelling — than your Xbox, PlayStation, Wii, or PC.

Valve is trying to build a game console that you haven’t seen before: something that brings the PC (the big thing sitting on your desk) and the traditional console (the little thing sitting under your TV) together into a single device. A device that will run Valve’s Steam platform: the biggest digital game distribution service on the market, with upwards of 50 million users. (By comparison, Xbox Live has somewhere around 40 million subscribers.) But what does that really mean?

If you know...

Gabe Newell says Apple is the Steam Box's biggest threat

2013-01-30T23:40:04Z

Valve's Steam Box may be a challenger to consoles as we know them, but Gabe Newell said today that Apple is the company's biggest threat in the living room, Polygon reports. During a lecture given at the University of Texas, Newell said that "Apple has gained a huge amount of market share, and has a relatively obvious pathway toward entering the living room with their platform." He said "I think that there's a scenario where we see sort of a dumbed down living room platform emerging — I think Apple rolls the console guys really easily." Valve's challenge, Newell explains, is to make progress getting a PC in the living room, and to "figure out better ways of addressing mobile." Valve could have an uphill battle to get there, but based...

'Steam was broken' without a route to the living room, says Valve's Greg Coomer

2013-01-09T14:38:53Z

In an interview with Polygon's Christopher Grant, Valve product designer Greg Coomer elaborates on the rationale behind Steam's push into the living room, first with Big Picture and now with the Steam Box. Gamers on Valve's platform wanted to play on their television sets using gaming controllers, and weren't able to realize the full value of a cloud delivery platform like Steam without that piece. Once there, Valve bumped up against the limitations of PC machines, from noisy fans to crufty code. Eventually that led to the current vision: a broad spec for manufacturers plus a Valve-branded, dedicated Linux box.