Life is a give and take. As Gabe Newell took home a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Fellowship Award, he gleaned a little insight into the future of his contribution to the new wave of console competitors: the Steam Box. Speaking with the BBC, the Valve bigwig said that the Steam Box could be out to testers in as little as three to four months.
In pre-BAFTA banter, the Valve co-founder said that he and his crew were “trying to nail down how fast” units could be produced, while resolving key issues they are currently facing:
“There are noise issues and heat issues and being able to [deal with] that while still offering a powerful enough gaming experience is the challenge in building it.”
While other key details, like price, remain unknown, Newell did reveal that he and his partners were exploring bio-metric technology integration to measure stress rates as players interact with their favorite games:
“If you think of a game like Left For Dead – which was trying to put you into a sort of horror movie – if you don’t change the experience of what the player is actually feeling then it stops being a horror game.
“So you need to actually be able to directly measure how aroused the player is – what their heart rate is, things like that – in order to offer them a new experience each time they play.”
Newell previously stated that his Steam Box could and would squash the console competition and only expressed worry about Apple squeezing into the living room market. Microsoft is on the boat with an Apple-helmed threat, but they’re not sweating Valve’s offering to the market. Microsoft’s head of Interactive Entertainment Business, Don Mattrick says that while he “loves Gabe,” he feels that the next generation of consoles is offering a “richer” experience across the board — Valve is no competition for the traditional console market.
Source 2: The Verge
