Valve Plans to Develop Gaming Hardware

[Chibs]

http://www.valvesoftware.com/jobs/job_postings.html
http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/09/03/valve-confirms-hardware-development

Taking a quick look at the "Industrial Designer" description on Valve's job listings page reveals a passage of particularly interesting information:

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.

So basically, Valve is planning on developing some form of physical computer hardware, though details are understandably devoid of appearance at the time. However, it's worth bringing to attention for the potential discussion and long-term interest.

 

[SSNTails]

Hopefully they make a lot of easy-to-use APIs to develop games. That's a real problem with Android.

 

[MechaS3K]

The problem with this is that everything on Steam is coded for Windows and DirectX. This is either going to be a gimmicky peripheral that about five games will support, an Alienware knockoff, or some sort of Ubuntu-based system, perhaps with a specialized media layer. If it's the latter (and there's a good chance it will be, considering Gay Ben's financially-motivated hatred of Windows 8) then it'll be like Steam for Mac, only worse, because you will literally only be able to play Source games from Valve on it.

 

[WedgeStratos]

I honestly doubt that they'd develop a hardware platform exclusively for their engine. That'd seem a bit elitist, don't you think?

If they were to develop hardware, I'd probably lean for it being an Alienware spin, although the Ubuntu-based thing doesn't seem horrible. I'm sure they can develop some frontend for more open functionality with the Windows-only software. Regardless, I barely see that happening. If anything, this "Steam Box" thing could be a means for affordable gaming hardware to those who don't want to spend $800 to play a few games on their PC. Maybe it'll be the Ouya situation where you can customize the hardware. Maybe it's a Windows PC where the added bloatware this time is Steam. There isn't any information regarding it and all this reads into is that maybe they're looking into peripherals, at least? I wouldn't mind playing a Steam game with a Valve-licensed gamepad :P

 

[Violo]

Continuing from Ultima, it could also be just a box that has a "Big Picture"-esque operating system to play Steam games. Though that would require some weird support of Windows systems on something else, but there could be something (C++ compiler for it?).

 

[I'll Begin]

Big Picture running on an embedded Windows/Linux system sound great to me!

With Linux they could customise it to suit Steam, but even running Windows Embedded would be likely and more feasible. Nearly everything with a screen, whether it's an ATM, a modern arcade machine, or a digital timetable at a train station, it's probably running Windows Embedded.