The announcement of Steam Machines, along with Steam OS and the Steam Controller, has sparked curiosity in the eyes of many. Steam Machines, specifically, gathered a lot of attention in the gaming world as to whether these machines could keep up with their PC counterparts. As we’ve seen the machines prove themselves as viable options for non-PC gamers, many wanted to know whether that meant Valve was going into the hardware business by creating their own machines.
Gabe Newell removed doubt at CES on Monday. He stated that he sees Valve playing more of a supportive role in the race.
“I mean, we’ve made 300 [machines], which is a very tiny step,” Newell said. “We’ll make what we need to. We really view our role in this as enabling. So we’ll do whatever is going to be helpful to other hardware manufacturers – whether that’s with controller design or building specific kinds of boxes.”
So Valve doesn’t have any immediate plans on making their boxes available to the consumers, but Newell also said that they will continue to do what they need to do and make those decisions along the way.
“We’re going to continue to make that decision as we go along,” Newell said. “We’ve been happy with the results of doing hardware development with clients. We have plans to build more machines, but we also expect that users will be really happy with the range of offerings from these hardware manufacturers.”
This is good news in my eyes because I think that Valve should stick to what they do best. They are great at offering support for Steam on PC, which is the best digital distribution service for games on the market. Steam OS has the potential to be a great operating system as well, but only if Valve stays focused, which is fortunately what they seem to be doing.
What do you think about Valve staying out of the hardware/console race? What are your thoughts? Comment Below!
