The world has long expected an announcement from Valve, the company behind Steam, regarding a so-called Steam Box. A Steam Box is PC gaming hardware designed for use in the living room and the newly-announced SteamOS is now the logical operating system for such a device.
Following on the heels of the SteamOS reveal, Valve has also given details for Steam Machines, a hardware beta which will lead to the release of the Steam Box. Or, rather, the release of several different types of Steam Box.
Valves says that they are “working with multiple partners to bring a variety of Steam gaming machines to market during 2014, all of them running SteamOS”, and the company is looking for some 300 participants to test out the hardware configurations that they have in mind.
The company is mum on the specifications for the device but those who qualify for the beta program will have one of the prototype living-room machines shipped to them free of charge, for testing purposes. The hardware is planned for 2014 but gamers are still welcome to build their own setups and load SteamOS onto it as well.