AfterDawn

Valve boss Gabe Newell has announced this week that the company will be launching a console built for the living room next year.

Newell says the company's main focus now is how to make PCs work better in the living room on the big screen. The first step was releasing their "Big Picture" UI earlier this year. 

PC packages that are designed to run on a TV will be launched next year, by Valve and by other manufacturers, with each being able to run Steam flawlessly out of the gate. 

Newell says the PCs will compete with the Xbox 8 and the PS4. 

I think in general that most customers and most developers are gonna find that [the PC is] a better environment for them," Newell noted to Kotaku. "Cause they won't have to split the world into thinking about 'why are my friends in the living room, why are my video sources in the living room different from everyone else?' So in a sense we hopefully are gonna unify those environments. We'll do it but we also think other people will as well." 

The Valve head did note that their console would not be as open as the average computer: "Well certainly our hardware will be a very controlled environment. If you want more flexibility, you can always buy a more general purpose PC. For people who want a more turnkey solution, that's what some people are really gonna want for their living room. The nice thing about a PC is a lot of different people can try out different solutions, and customers can find the ones that work best for them."

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2012/12/09/valve_will_release_pc_console_next_year

Half-Life 2.9 as launch title confirmed.

No, thank you.

If I'm reading this correctly its not just Valve releasing a living-room PC, its multiple manufacturers.
I don't really see how this can go well....we're talking about flooding the console market with lots of hardware. I don't like the sound of it.

Will Valve's Steam Box have its own space alongside the PS4 or Xbox 720 at retail? Or will it be in the computers section? Will it play discs or is it purely digital?

Sounds very risky.

And did I read correctly that they were not the only one's opting to do this?

So basically it's a gaming PC built around Steam that takes a lot of the guesswork associated with maintaining and upgrading a PC out of the equation?

This is really exciting.

If it's digital only, no thank you.

If the games aren't "consolised", no thank you.

If it doesn't do anything more than my PC, no thank you.

If it has amazing exclusives, maybe.

They should call it a "console". 
Revolutionary.

we still need more info before we can judge this, hopefully they will announce stuff soon

I don't understand why anyone would buy this. We know it won't be able to compete with the power of next gen systems (with optimization) unless its games are optimized themselves. If that's the case it will be nothing more than a home console without exclusive first party games. If it just runs all PC games then why wouldn't I buy a computer? I'll stay skeptical until I know more.