14 DAY TRIAL // The second Steam Living Room announcement has just been made by Valve and, instead of the much-rumored Steam Box, it's actually an initiative called Steam Machines, that will allow gamers to choose from different configurations of PCs, all running the new SteamOS.
Valve wants to change computer-based gaming and, in order to bring some degree of uniformity, it has confirmed the Steam Machines initiative.
The plan is to create, with the help of hardware manufacturers, different computer builds that will all come pre-installed with the SteamOS operating system.
"Entertainment is not a one-size-fits-all world. We want you to be able to choose the hardware that makes sense for you, so we are working with multiple partners to bring a variety of Steam gaming machines to market during 2014, all of them running SteamOS."
The Steam Box is still alive, however, as Valve has revealed on its website that it's designed a "high-performance prototype."
What's more, 300 of these devices will be shipped to Steam users free of charge, for testing purposes.
Want to know what you need to do to get a free Steam Box? Read on to see the requirements.
"THE HARDWARE BETA ELIGIBILITY QUEST: Before October 25, log in to Steam and then visit your quest page to track your current status towards beta test eligibility 1. Join the Steam Universe community group 2. Agree to the Steam Hardware Beta Terms and Conditions 3. Make 10 Steam friends (if you haven't already) 4. Create a public Steam Community profile (if you haven't already) 5. Play a game using a gamepad in Big Picture mode"
"You can complete the steps in any order. Once you’ve completed all of the steps, you’ll be awarded a special badge, and you’ll officially be among the pool of people from whom we’ll choose beta participants / hardware recipients."
In 2014 the first Steam Machines will start rolling out. Expect to hear more details until then.