Skip to main content

Valve to launch Steam-centric living room PC in 2013

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
Check your inbox!

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.

Anna Washenko
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Anna is a professional writer living in Chicago. She covers everything from social media to digital entertainment, from tech…
How the Blue Screen of Death became your PC’s grim reaper
The Blue Screen of Death seen on a laptop.

There's nothing more startling than your PC suddenly locking up and crashing to a Blue Screen of Death. Otherwise known as a Blue Screen, BSOD, or within the walls of Microsoft, a bug check screen, the Blue Screen of Death is as iconic as it is infamous. Blue Screen of Death is not a proper noun, but I'm going to treat it like one. It's what you were met with during crashes on Intel's 14th-gen CPUs, and it littered airport terminals during the recent CrowdStrike outage.

Everyone knows that a Blue Screen is bad news -- tack on "of Death" to that, and the point is only clearer. It's a sign that something catastrophic has happened, so much so that the operating system can't recover, and it needs to reboot your PC in order to save it. The Blue Screen of Death we know today, fit with its frowning emoticon, is a relatively new development in the history of Windows.

Read more
This Alienware gaming PC with RTX 4090 is almost $1,000 off
Alienware Aurora R16 sitting on a coffee table.

Is your current gaming PC on its last legs? If you need an upgrade, check out Dell's offer for the Alienware Aurora R16 gaming desktop with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card. From its original price of $4,695, the machine is down to $3,700. It's still pretty expensive, but you won't always get the chance to buy such a powerful gaming PC with a nearly $1,000 discount. However, if you want to pocket the savings of $995, you're going to have to be quick with your purchase as there's no telling when this bargain expires.

Why you should buy the Alienware Aurora R16 gaming desktop
The Alienware Aurora R16, which received a rating of four out of five stars in our review, sits on top of our list of the best gaming PCs. Compared to the Alienware Aurora R15, this latest version of the gaming desktop is around half the size without compromising power or thermals, with upgraded internals for even better performance. In addition to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, this configuration of the Alienware Aurora R16 features the 14th-generation Intel Core i9 processor and 64GB of RAM, which our guide on how to buy a gaming desktop says would be useful for those who will use their machine for other purposes beyond gaming, such as editing videos.

Read more
Gamers are finally flocking to Windows 11 after 3 years
Spider-man running on the Asus ROG PG42UQG.

Windows 11 is getting a lot more popular lately. In the latest Steam hardware survey, Valve clocked that 51.97% of its user base is now using Windows 11, which is a 4.28% increase compared to last month and the highest share the operating system has ever seen, despite being readily available for over three years.

Windows 10, the second-most popular operating system on Steam, fell by 2.71%, and now makes up 45.95% of the users Valve surveyed. Just a couple of months ago, when Valve released its August survey results, Windows 11 overtook Windows 10 for the first time in the hardware survey. The gap is only widening now, with the share lost by Windows 10 going almost directly to Windows 11. Earlier this year, Windows 11 adoption was actually down on the Steam hardware survey, with some claiming that Windows 10 offered better gaming performance.

Read more