Valve to launch Steam-centric living room PC in 2013

By Anna Washenko Published December 10, 2012

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Gabe Newell, head of Valve, recently spoke to Kotaku and confirmed rumors that’ve been floating around since March that that the company will make a console-style PC powered by its Steam gaming platform. Newell said Valve would be one of the many businesses releasing compact PCs designed to be the hub of living room entertainment some time in 2013.

Having recently released Big Picture, a TV-friendly user interface for its Steam client, Valve marked an early step toward the goal of a branded PC. It moves all the features of Steam – from the game library to the store with serious sales – onto your TV with full or partial controller support for all titles. Newell said Big Picture, which just came out of beta last week, has received a strong positive response.

Recommended Videos

The new PC won’t be out right away, however. Valve is still finishing the Linux version of Steam and then needs to get Big Picture up and running on the OS. That focus means it’s possible that the Valve PC will be Linux-based rather than follow the Windows model in order to have a more carefully-defined user experience. “Our hardware will be a very controlled environment,” Newell said. “If you want more flexibility, you can always buy a more general-purpose PC.”

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming

In an unusual twist to the race, some of Valve’s future PC rivals in that sector will be coming with Steam preloaded. It will be interesting to see if the Valve name alone can carry it past the competition or if we’ll be seeing some unexpected breakthroughs in the experience and interface from another brand. Valve will also be going up against the next generation of consoles, with Xbox and PlayStation expected to release major new products in 2013. It seems unlikely that console gamers will give up those traditional platforms, but it would mark a huge change in the setup for PC players. The gaming community will certainly be keeping a close eye on the studio’s push into the hardware side. After all, the people responsible for revolutionary titles such as Half-Life 2 and Portal clearly have a good idea about what gamers want.

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Anna is a professional writer living in Chicago. She covers everything from social media to digital entertainment, from tech…

Computing

This iBuyPower gaming PC with RTX 4070 Ti Super is $700 off

The iBuyPower Y70 001 gaming PC on a white background.

Gamers who want to upgrade to a top-tier machine through gaming PC deals should check out this offer for the iBuyPower RDY Y70 001 gaming PC. Originally $2,599, a $600 discount slashes its price to $1,999. However, with the discount code IBP25YR that you'll enter upon checkout, you'll get another $100 off, for total savings of $700 and a final price of $1,899. That's an excellent price for a gaming PC that's this powerful, so you better hurry with your purchase if you're interested because stocks may not last long.

Why you should buy the iBuyPower RDY Y70 001 gaming PC
The iBuyPower RDY Y70 001 makes a run at the best gaming PCs with the powerful performance provided by its 14th-generation Intel Core i9 processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super graphics card, alongside 32GB of RAM that's enough for even the most demanding games, according to our guide on how to buy a gaming desktop. Not only will this gaming PC be able to run the best PC games at their highest settings, but it will also be ready for the upcoming PC games of the next few years.

Computing

No, generative AI isn’t taking over your PC games anytime soon

Cyberpunk 2077 running on the Samsung Odyssey OLED G8.

Surprise -- the internet is upset. This time, it's about a recent article from PC Gamer on the future of generative AI in video games. It's a topic I've written about previously, and something that game companies have been experimenting with for more than a year, but this particular story struck a nerve.

Redditors used strong language like "pro-AI puff piece," PC Gamer itself issued an apology, and the character designer for Bioshock Infinite's Elizabeth called the featured image showing the character reimagined with AI a "half-assed cosplay." The original intent of the article is to glimpse into the future at what games could look like with generative AI, but without the tact or clear realization of how this shift affects people's jobs and their creative works.

Computing

The launch of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D feels very close — and it might disappoint

AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X3D sitting in the box.

We may not talk about feelings much when discussing the best processors, but a mountain of leaks and rumors have been swirling about AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7 9800X3D -- and they're becoming too big to ignore. The most recent development is a post on the Chiphell forum (via Wccftech) that claims the processor will be announced on October 25, with a release in the first week of November.

On its own, this isn't anything too exciting. We see claims about hardware launches all the time, but the past two weeks have been riddled with murmurs about what is undoubtedly AMD's most-anticipated CPU this generation. Just a few days ago, a leaked slide from an internal MSI presentation pitted the Ryzen 7 9800X3D against last-gen's Ryzen 7 7800X3D, and showed anywhere from a 2% to 13% improvement. The slides were originally shared by HardwareLuxx, but the post was removed, suggesting the images were probably real (VideoCardz has the images archived).