Hasta La Gadget!

Virtual Reality is one of this year’s big would-be comeback stories, led largely by the runaway success of the Oculus Rift Kickstarter and Valve’s recent rumblings on the matter. Not surprisingly, that talk is set to continue at South by Southwest Interactive this week, where Oculus Rift vice president of product Nate Mitchell will be moderating a panel discussing virtual reality as the “holy grail of gaming.” The panelists? Oculus VR’s Palmer Luckey, as well as former Epic Games design director Cliff Bleszinski and Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts. We’d say this is one worth watching, and you’ll be able to do just that today at 7PM Eastern (4PM Pacific) courtesy of the livestream after the break. We’re also live at SXSW ourselves, and will of course bring you any news that may come out of the event if you happen to miss it.

Update: Please excuse us, as we were misinformed of the panelists participating (this piece originally stated that John Carmack and Gabe Newell would both be involved). We’ve updated the post above to reflect the actual lineup.

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Source: Ustream

It would appear that the Steam-powered gaming console will be available rather soon for developers and hardware partners alike. News has come down from Valve‘s Game Newell himself as he spoke with the BBC about the future of the company immediately before the start of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Games Awards. There he was also being awarded a lovely Academy Fellowship as well.

The details surrounding the Valve-made Steam Box are still on the light side here in the first part of 2013, but the platform – that which ties the whole Valve universe together – is ready and willing to take on the gaming console masses. According to Newell, the point the company is at is inside talks with partners in the hardware market. His assurance that first iterations of a real physical product existing in the next few months were less than solid.

“We’re working with partners trying to nail down how fast we can make it. We’ll be giving out some prototypes to customers to gauge their reactions, I guess, in the next three to four months. 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.” – Newell

Newell was unsure of the price they’d be able to offer the end-product system at, citing possibilities in subsidies from software companies (or the lack therein) as well as the early stage they’re still in with production. Noting that the partners they’re working with now “will put forth an impressive machine” without a doubt, Newell made it clear that he expects the greater app ecosystem to be “unlikely to match other consoles” with their connections to video conferencing titles, Netflix, and “non-gaming aspects” galore.

Have a peek a the timeline below to gain greater insight on the Steam Box and what it’ll mean for the gaming universe in the near future – we’ll be on top of it here on SlashGear for the foreseeable future too!

Valve Steam Box prototypes pegged for Spring 2013 is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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We’ve known that game company and Steam operator Valve Software was going to offer prototypes of its hardware to Steam users for some time, but company head Gabe Newell niw says that those prototypes will start arriving in the next three to four months time. Moreover, beyond just the controllers we suspected to be part of the beta program, Newell tells the BBC that said prototypes will be of the Steambox, Valve’s living room-friendly PC gaming initiative. “We’re working with partners trying to nail down how fast we can make it,” Newell said.

He cited noise and heat concerns as the holdup for retail availability of various Steamboxes — both Valve itself and a variety of third-party companies are working on the initiative, including Xi3 and unnamed others. He also speculated about what control device might be included in various Steambox setups (the systems are said to range in power and price, from low to very high). He did posit that some form of biological monitoring would be built into a potential Valve game controller (biometrics). “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 said. He also cited the controller as a current roadblock in making the Steambox available. “The main thing that’s holding us up right now is nailing … we have a couple of different controller prototypes that we’re using, and that’s one of the things that we’re giving to customers,” he added. Valve is apparently planning on including a handful of controllers with Steambox prototypes in its upcoming beta, so that users can give feedback for each and Valve can break down how players are using them.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals, Software, HD

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Source: BBC

Valve’s Steam client first debuted on PC, then made its way to Mac OSX with a companion iOS and Android app released shortly thereafter. One OS the company has yet to make its popular Steam client available on was Linux, that is, until today’s official release.

That’s right – Linux users. Valve has finally released a Steam client for Linux and if that news wasn’t good enough for you to immediately start downloading the application, then the news of Valve discounting the entire catalog of Linux-compatible games anywhere between 50% to 75% will get you to download Steam immediately. The sale will run from today’s release up until February 21 at 10 a.m. PT. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Computer That Never Crashes Mimics Biology, Bump Is The Easy Way to Transfer Data Between Phones and Computers,

Ubuntu users who’ve been thirsty for the first stable release of Valve’s Steam Client can officially consider themselves quenched. After months of rigorous beta testing, Newell’s platform has finally arrived in the Software Center for download. You’ll be even more enthused to know that it’s currently packing 100 games, all of which are temporarily discounted 50- to 75-percent (until Feb. 21st, 1PM EST) to get the party started — Team Fortress players also get a “Tux penguin”. And with that, we’ll steer you to the source link below to download it for yourself.

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Source: Canonical