PCR Tech and IT retail, distribution and vendor news
Valve’s chief executive Gabe Newell has revealed that initial prototypes of the firm’s games console will be available within four months.
Newell made the claims at last night’s BAFTA Games Awards, during which the Valve founder was honoured with an Academy Fellowship for his contribution to games.
"We’re working with partners trying to nail down how fast we can make it," Newell told the BBC, "We’ll be giving out some prototypes to customers to gauge their reactions, I guess, in the next three to four months."
Newell highlighted that continued work to finalise the console’s controller were holding up the device’s release, in addition to finding ways to heighten the user’s participation in games, particularly through the use of sensors to measure their body state.
"If you think of a game like Left For Dead – which was trying to put you into a sort of horror movie – if you don’t change the experience of what the player is actually feeling then it stops being a horror game," Mr Newell explained.
"So you need to actually be able to directly measure how aroused the player is – what their heart rate is, things like that – in order to offer them a new experience each time they play."
Valve’s Steam Box is designed to take the firm’s vastly popular games distribution service, which currently boasts over 50 million registered accounts, into the living room and widening the service’s appeal to console gamers.
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