Valve Introduces Steam Box With Biometrics This Summer

Valve Corporation is set to launch the first prototype of the Steam Box game console to consumers in 3-4 months, Valve CEO Gabe Newell told the BBC before the Academy Fellowship award at the British Film and Television Arts Academy (BAFTA).

According to Gabe, at the moment the console has problems such as overheating, loud noise and uncertainty with the controller, in which Valve plans to install sensors that monitor the player’s body condition.

If you think about a game like Left 4 Dead, which is trying to put you in some kind of horror movie, then if you do not change the feeling of what the player really feels, it will cease to be a horror game.

Therefore, you really need to be able to directly determine how excited the player is: his pulse and the like, in order to give him a new sensation from each game.

- Gabe Newell

The new console, focused on the game on the big screen, will be a PC running Linux and is being developed by Valve together with partners, among which, perhaps, Xi3 is also developing a miniature console, code-named Piston under Steam, which was introduced a month ago.



The price of the console is still unknown.

Speaking of Piston, the day before, Infinity Ward, the creator of the Call of Duty series, posted on Twitter and Facebook a photo of the console with its logo on it, which shows the console in comparison with the smartphone.



Recall that the first rumors about the console from Valve appeared back in May 2011, when Valve patentedgamepad with interchangeable parts.



About a year later, Valve talked about a possible console announcement, codenamed "Steam Box" at the GDC, and then hired electronics specialists, including the creator of Commodore 64 emulator in the joystick Jerry Ellsworth , who had recently been fired from Valve.

And at the end of 2012, Steam added the “ Big Picture ” mode , designed to play on large screens with a controller.