In a recent talk at LinuxCon 2013, Valve CEO Gabe Newell reaffirmed his belief that Linux, and open source platforms in general, are the future of gaming. Valve launched the Steam online gaming store on Linux in February of this year and the store is already host to 198 games. Valve is infamously tight-lipped about upcoming projects, but the prospect of a Linux-based “Steam Box” has been in the works for quite some time, and Newell remarked during his talk that more information about the future of Valve in the living room might be right around the corner.
“The next step in our contribution to this is to release some work we’ve done on the hardware side,” said Newell. “Next week we’re going to be rolling out more information about how we get there and what are the hardware opportunities we see for bringing Linux into the living room.”
Newell spent most of his talk speaking more broadly about the benefits of the Linux development environment and Valve’s attempt to change the perception that a living room device requires a different set of inputs or completely separate software than a PC. The Steam Box is planned to address all of these concerns, but Valve only has so much time before the next generation of consoles once again consume the conversation.
The video of Newell’s speech follows below.
