Steam Box Prototype Console Released to Testers Within Four Months

Those lucky people at the BBC managed to nab an interview with Valve CEO Gabe Newell ahead of the BAFTA Games Awards, where he is being honoured with an Academy Fellowship.

In the interview, Newell revealed that the upcoming Steam Box console is expected to be made available to testers within three to four months:

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 also added that the design of the console's controller still had to be finalized, as the company is still exploring the possibility of including sensors to measure the gamers' body states to significantly enhance gameplay:

If you think of a game like Left For Dead - which was trying to put you into a sort of horror movie - if you don't change the experience of what the player is actually feeling then it stops being a horror game. So 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.

The price of the console has not been revealed yet either, but is expected to make a big impression in the gaming world and will compete head-on with the next gen consoles from Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft.

Source: BBC. Includes video of the interview.