Earlier this month, Valve released specs of its prototype Steam Box units and holy hell they were impressive. The eagle-eyed would have noticed that it was a purely Intel party — turns out it won’t be that way for long.
Speaking to Forbes, Doug Lombardi, from Valve, has explained:
“Last week, we posted some technical specs of our first wave of Steam Machine prototypes. Although the graphics hardware that we’ve selected for the first wave of prototypes is a variety of Nvidia NVDA +1.05% cards, that is not an indication that Steam Machines are Nvidia-only. In 2014, there will be Steam Machines commercially available with graphics hardware made by AMD, Nvidia, and Intel. Valve has worked closely together with all three of these companies on optimising their hardware for SteamOS, and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future.”
It’s not clear what form the AMD-powered boxes will take — if, for instance, they’ll be equivalent to the Intel offerings or more budget-friendly. Either way, Forbes is also speculating that this is U-turn from Steam, which felt pressure from AMD to make the decision. If that’s the case, it seems to have worked. [Forbes]