[Rumor] Valve Working on ‘Steam Box’ Console with Customizable Controller

Last month, Valve’s Gabe Newell said that the company would get into the hardware business if the company felt like it had to. Now, a report out of The Verge suggests that Valve is already hard at work on a “Steam Box” console.

According to the report, Valve has been working out what the hardware and software specs for a “Steam Box” would be. The Steam Box would, of course, have full-on steam support, supposedly including the “Big Picture” mode to make the Steam in-game overlay more HDTV-friendly, but that’s not all.

The report goes on to say that Valve’s Steam Box could run software from its competitors, including EA’s Origin digital distribution service. Valve’s console of sorts would be able to run all PC games currently on Steam, with specs said to be around the range of an Intel i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and an unspecified NVIDIA card.

Adding further credibility to the report, The Verge picked up on a patent filing by Valve for a controller with interchangeable parts, which sounds similar in concept to the MLG Pro controller from Mad Catz. Various USB peripherals are also said to be supported by the Steam Box, however, so the standard mouse-and-keyboard control option remains a possibility.

None of these details were confirmed by Valve, so don’t get too excited about the prospect of Valve getting into the console business just yet. If it does turn out to be true, well, consider me excited to see what Valve can do.

Source: The Verge