Valve job listing points to hardware plans for 'whole new gaming experiences'

[Blacksite]

Yes, there are employees at Valve right now who are working on some form of gaming hardware. What that gaming hardware is, however, remains to be seen. A job listing discovered by Engadget this week offers more clues as to what that hardware could be, specifically pointing to job skills like "hardware design, prototyping, testing, and production across a wide range of platforms."

Getting more direct, the "electronics engineer" position entails working "with the hardware team to conceive, design, evaluate, and produce new types of input, output, and platform hardware." Wait, platform hardware? That sounds an awful lot like the Steam Box rumors we heard earlier this year (rumors that were later semi-shut down).

But don't get your hopes up just yet – just because Valve is experimenting with different types of hardware doesn't mean that it's looking to produce a piece of consumer hardware any time soon. We've reached out to Valve for further clarity, but aren't expecting much beyond silence.

Source

Interesting.

[emmerich]

Perhaps this could be a console like version of Steam with the Steam store built in to it?

[Ghost-Rhayne]

would be all over this shit day 1.

[Rekmon]

C'mon Gabe, make a Steambox.

[keefy]

C'mon Gabe, make a Steambox.

Gabecube

[Rekmon]

Gabecube

New(ell)Box

[nickrobbins]

A "steambox" (Love the name by the way) would be great especially with steam built in, there are Far better deals on that than psn/ Xbox live, the only reason I don't use it often is because my pc isn't meant for serious gaming hence the reason i only play star wars and fm 2012 on it.

[Thorzilla]

If they made it right, the Steam Box thing could actually be upgraded like a PC eventually!

[Rapture]

If anyone can do it, it's Gabe and Steam. They have the balls and industry know-how to do this sort of stunt.

[maltrophstitan]

Apple CEO Tim Cook spotted at video game designer Valve's headquarters

hmmmmm....

[Nuvian]

Valve reveals mystery hardware project: wearable computing

This morning, Valve Software set the world of gaming news abuzz by attempting to hire hardware engineers. Now, Valve developer (and well-known programmer) Michael Abrash has revealed what kind of hardware the company is prototyping: computer technology you can wear.

It's certainly an important time to admit such a thing, considering how Google's Project Glass heads-up display generated so much interest last week, but Abrash cautions that you shouldn't expect a product out of Valve anytime soon, if at all:

To be clear, this is R&D – it doesn’t in any way involve a product at this point, and won’t for a long while, if ever – so please, no rumors about Steam glasses being announced at E3. It’s an initial investigation into a very interesting and promising space, and falls more under the heading of research than development. The Valve approach is to do experiments and see what we learn – failure is fine, just so long as we can identify failure quickly, learn from it, and move on – and then apply it to the next experiment. The process is very fast-moving and iterative, and we’re just at the start. How far and where the investigation goes depends on what we learn.

The reveal is actually part of a long, fascinating blog post about how Abrash was first drawn to work at Valve, after years at Microsoft, Intel (on the canceled Larrabee graphics architecture) and id, where he coauthored Quake, not to mention how the intense freedom at Valve (and a love of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash) helped him start building the wearable computing R&D project in the first place. It's hard to think of a better recruiting pitch, and he's even asking for interested talent to shoot him an email. Head on over to our source link to take a look.

[brebaz]

iSteam!!