Valve Announces SteamBoxes Coming Next Year, Beta Hardware Coming Soon

Today, Valve announced that SteamOS-powered...consoles? Computers? Gaming machines? will be coming, from a variety of manufacturers, sometime next year. More exciting, however, is that they'll be giving away 300 beta prototypes to a select group of Steam users, sometime in the next couple of months.

Read the full content of this Article: http://www.notebookreview.com/news/valve-announces-steamboxes-coming-next-year-beta-hardware-coming-soon/

 

Let me make sure I understand this. Is the Steam Store the sole permissible source of software for SteamBoxes? Given that Gabe Newell has been shouting from the hilltops about "openness" and the like, that sure doesn't sound like the openness that people expect from Linux.

I noted in the introduction to SteamOS that Gabe made no mention whatsoever of running third-party Linux software (like Firefox and OpenOffice) on a SteamBox, even though that would be a serious competitive advantage over Xboxes and Playstations if you could do it. This once again looks like SteamOS somewhat of a closed-off ecosystem, at least in its out-of-the-box form.

 

No, no, I spoke overly broadly. It's just that the vast majority of software that gets pre-installed on Windows boxes has no Linux equivalent, and all the work these companies have invested in putting their own media stores on Windows PCs are unlikely to have Linux counterparts because the level of sales are unlikely to justify the engineering efforts.

It's not closed off, at all. You'll be able to do whatever you like, but for now, I don't see companies doing much.

 

Thanks for the clarification.