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Over the course of three announcements this week, Valve finally set in stone its vision for taking over the living room, first with the reveal of SteamOS, then later with Steam Machines and a new, somewhat eccentric controller. It's news that's been signposted in interviews with Gabe Newell over the past couple of years, but the ramifications are far-reaching. Here, Eurogamer's writers respond to what the news means, and where it's taking Valve. Even when Valve isn't making games, it's still making games interesting. Look at that controller: it's big, bold, nutty thinking, and even if you're unconvinced by it, there's something delightful about how unusual it is. I don't yet want one myself, but it's made me realise what's so exciting about the company's advance into the living room: it doesn't seem defeated or scared or antsy about what the competition's up to. It's doing what seems, to Valve, like the natural thing to do, and that's its only concern.
As for the Steam Machine itself, I'm equally excited, although, having bought a decent-ish PC a year or so back, I'll need to see a lot more before I consider buying one. I appreciate the fact that Valve's committed to making stuff people can meddle with to their heart's content - and that seems particularly admirable in an era when Apple's started glueing components into its laptops - but I actually hope there's a certain degree of standardisation in a lot of the various Steam hardware. I know a lot of people who are put off from making the jump to PC by the fact that the PC hardware landscape can look so frightening from the outside. In fact, a box which they know will play Steam games competently with little fuss is probably more important to them, I suspect, than the fact that that box also does it on the living room, in the big TV. Oh yes, and with a gloriously nutty controller.
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