Been waiting for an officially endorsed Steam Machine? Well, here it is, sort of — the Valve Steam Link. It’s a tiny, $US50 micro-PC that seems to do absolutely nothing but pipe PC games in over a local network via Steam-in-home-streaming.
Want a Steam Controller? You can get that too, but it will cost you an extra $US50. Both will launch in November, but the barebones Link isn’t the only official Steam Machine landing this year. Valve announced that new PC Consoles from both Alienware and Falcon Northwest are on the way, with yet more machines launching this Fall. It’s been (and still is) a long wait since Valve promised to take over the living room at CES 2013, but it looks like it’s finally happening.
Not good enough? Fine — Valve announced one other major thing at GDC today, but it’s a bit of a tease: Source Engine 2 is coming. The next major version of the company’s game development engine is news enough on its own, but last time the company released a development platform, it came with a new Half-Life game. Are we finally going to see the end of the trilogy? One can only hope.